More than one million owners of recent Jeep Wranglers and Gladiators have been told by federal safety regulators to park their vehicles outside, away from homes, garages, and other structures, until dealers can fix a defect in the electric hydraulic power steering pump that can cause fires. The recall covers model years 2021 through 2025 and affects 1,076,999 vehicles in the United States alone. It is the latest in a string of Stellantis recalls that have prompted the same stark instruction: keep the vehicle away from anything that could burn.
Why a million Jeeps now carry a park-outside warning
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration identified an electrical connection problem in the electric hydraulic power steering, or EHPS, pump as the source of the fire risk. According to the agency, the wiring can overheat and ignite materials near the pump, creating conditions for a vehicle fire whether the engine is running or not. That is why the guidance goes beyond the typical “take your car to a dealer” recall language. Owners are explicitly told in the agency’s park-outside warning to park outside and away from other vehicles and buildings until the repair is complete.
The sheer size of the affected population, nearly 1.08 million vehicles in the United States, makes compliance a logistical challenge. Many owners rely on attached garages or covered parking, and the instruction effectively asks them to change daily routines for an indefinite period while parts and dealer capacity catch up. Stellantis has separately confirmed a broader recall population exceeding 1.3 million Jeep vehicles worldwide when counting non-U.S. markets, according to Reuters reporting tied to company and NHTSA filings. The gap between the U.S. figure and the global total suggests the same EHPS pump wiring issue extends across international production runs.
For owners, the park-outside directive is more than a minor inconvenience. People who live in dense urban areas may have limited access to safe outdoor parking, and those in colder climates may be reluctant to leave vehicles exposed. Yet NHTSA’s language leaves little room for exceptions, underscoring that the risk exists even when vehicles are parked and turned off. The concern is that a latent electrical short in the EHPS system could smolder and transition into an open flame without any driver input.
A pattern of fire recalls and the EHPS pump connection
This is not the first time NHTSA has issued a park-outside directive for Jeep models. The agency previously applied the same language to Jeep Wrangler and Grand Cherokee plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, or PHEVs, after battery-related fire risks surfaced. In one round, roughly 194,000 plug-in hybrid SUV owners were told to stop charging and park outdoors, as detailed in an earlier Wrangler 4xe notice that warned of potential fires even when the vehicles were powered down.
A separate action covered approximately 320,000 Jeep plug-in hybrids recalled over a faulty battery that could catch fire. That campaign, described in a later consumer alert, again instructed owners to park outside and away from structures until a remedy could be applied. In both cases, NHTSA emphasized that the hazard could manifest while the vehicles were stationary, which is why it treated garages and carports as potential exposure points.
The current recall, however, targets a different component altogether. The EHPS pump is a standard part of the power steering system on conventional and hybrid Wranglers and Gladiators alike, not just plug-in models. Its wiring connects to the vehicle’s electrical system in a way that, when the connection degrades, can generate enough heat to set fire to surrounding materials. Unlike the PHEV battery recalls, which focused on high-voltage energy storage, this defect involves a more conventional 12-volt accessory circuit that nonetheless carries enough current to pose a serious fire risk.
The fact that the same park-outside directive now applies to both the PHEV battery issue and the EHPS pump wiring issue across overlapping model years raises questions about whether a shared supplier or shared wiring architecture links the two defect families. While the components are different, both problems center on electrical systems that can fail in a way that produces significant heat without immediate driver warning. For regulators, that similarity may justify a consistent response: remove the vehicle from enclosed spaces until the underlying hazard is addressed.
NHTSA’s repeated use of nearly identical consumer guidance across distinct platforms and powertrains suggests the agency views the fire risk as serious enough to override the inconvenience the instruction creates for owners. It also signals that NHTSA is willing to keep issuing these warnings as long as potential ignition sources remain unresolved in the field. Each new park-outside notice reinforces a broader message that fire hazards, even if statistically rare, will trigger aggressive public warnings when they can threaten homes and attached structures.
What Stellantis has not yet disclosed about the EHPS defect
Several gaps in the public record leave owners without a clear picture of how long they will need to keep their vehicles parked outdoors. Neither Stellantis nor NHTSA has published a projected timeline for parts availability or repair completion across the full recall population. For context, recalls of this scale, covering five model years and two distinct vehicle lines, typically take months or longer to work through the dealer network, especially when replacement components must be manufactured and distributed. Until dealers receive sufficient parts, many owners may find themselves on waiting lists.
The primary NHTSA filings also do not include a specific count of fires, injuries, or property damage incidents tied to the EHPS pump defect across the 1,076,999 affected vehicles. Without that data, owners cannot easily gauge the probability that their particular vehicle will experience a failure before the repair is available. The absence of incident totals also makes it harder to assess whether the defect is concentrated in certain model years or production batches, or whether it is spread evenly across the recall population. That lack of granularity can fuel anxiety among drivers who have not yet seen warning signs but are told to assume a nontrivial risk.
A deeper question involves the supplier chain. The EHPS pump and its wiring harness are sourced from external manufacturers, and the recall filings do not publicly identify the supplier or part numbers involved. Cross-referencing supplier codes in the underlying NHTSA recall submissions could reveal whether a single vendor’s component is responsible for the defect across all affected model years, or whether multiple suppliers contributed to the problem at different points in the production run. If a single supplier is implicated, Stellantis may need to requalify alternative parts or redesign the connector to prevent recurrence.
Stellantis has also not detailed what, if any, interim diagnostic checks dealers can perform before replacement parts arrive. In some recalls, manufacturers instruct technicians to inspect wiring for discoloration, melting, or corrosion and to disable affected circuits if necessary. In this case, there is no clear public guidance on whether visual inspection can reliably identify pumps at higher risk of failure. That leaves many owners in a binary position: either wait for the official remedy or continue daily use while following the park-outside instruction.
Another unresolved issue is how the company will prioritize repairs once parts are available. Automakers sometimes triage vehicles based on production date, region, or reported symptoms, focusing first on units deemed most likely to fail. Without a transparent prioritization plan, however, owners may perceive the process as arbitrary, especially if they have limited parking options or live in multi-unit buildings where outdoor spaces are shared and constrained.
For now, the guidance from regulators remains straightforward, if disruptive. Owners of the affected 2021–2025 Jeep Wrangler and Gladiator models are told to continue driving their vehicles only as needed, to watch for any signs of electrical burning smells or power steering problems, and, above all, to keep the vehicles parked outdoors and away from structures until the EHPS pump wiring can be repaired. Until Stellantis and NHTSA release more detailed information on incident counts, supplier responsibility, and repair timelines, that simple but burdensome instruction is likely to define daily life for more than a million Jeep households.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
