The US administration does not joke about vehicle reliability issues. Unlike Europe, which in no way requires manufacturers to communicate upstream with the authorities to recall the cars affected by problems, in the United States, the NHTSA, a road safety organization, ensures that all manufacturers are transparent. And this makes it possible in particular to have precise statistics on recalls. An expert in the US auto industry has just unveiled a particularly unusual piece of data: between 2011 and 2020, some 331 million vehicles were recalled, in the United States alone. A colossal figure since it is double the sales of new vehicles over the same period!
The interested party justifies this impressive figure by the pooling of platforms, engines, technologies and mechanical components by automotive groups. As a result, as soon as an item is affected by a recall, since it is spread over several automobiles of different brands, the recall then takes on significant proportions, very quickly.
“Overall, it is already foreseeable that the problems related to the battery system and the software problems will increase considerably”, specifies the analyst, which is not reassuring. And this is explained by an alignment of unfavorable parameters: growing complexity of cars, ever shorter development times due to competition, and ever greater pressure on costs and suppliers.
The manufacturers with the worst rate between the number of vehicles recalled and produced are Honda (332%), Mitsubishi, FCA, Mazda and BMW at over 200%.
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