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"So why is Kapton still in millions of Ford cars, trucks, and SUVs? Since the early 1990s, the company has used this DuPont-manufactured material in the hydraulic pressure switch that shuts off cruise control when drivers hit the brakes. Coated with Teflon, Kapton serves as a barrier between the flammable brake fluid and the electric current just millimeters away. Yet years of use can cause cracking in the Teflon, leaving the Kapton membrane and the switch itself vulnerable to ignition from the current—which, in Ford vehicles, continues even when the engine is off. “Imagine your insulating material,” Block says, “which is designed to hold in or contain current, acting like a sparkler.”

But Ford maintains that the root cause of the fires is too complex to fault a single component. Although the automaker acknowledges evidence of overheating in the cruise-control components in some models—attributing it to a “systems interaction” of leaking brake fluid, Teflon corrosion, age and mileage, plus the location of the switch—it has recalled less than a third of the vehicles with the Kapton switches".

Nearly 30 years after the Ford Pinto fiasco was exposed by this magazine, consumer advocates are now confronting Ford for being slow to address this known fire threat. Ralph Nader chastised the automaker in early September: “Ford Motor Company’s sluggish and piecemeal approach to its automotive responsibilities betrays motorists’ safety. If this part has now been recalled on three separate occasions, why isn’t it simply removed from the fleet?” In an open letter to Ford CEO William Clay Ford Jr., Nader added: “How much longer will you allow this $20 part to imperil the public?"