The US NHTSA is about to decide whether automakers will have to recall 52 million cars due to potentially dangerous airbag inflators from ARC Automotive.
About 52 million cars could be subject to a recall if NHTSA decides that ARC’s airbag inflators are actually dangerous and need to be replaced. After the well-known case of fraudulent Takata inflators, this could be the second largest recall in the history of the automotive industry.
What is it about in this case? The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has been examining airbag inflators developed and mostly manufactured by ARC Automotive for several months. The problem is that the gases from the inflator only have one opening to inflate the airbags, so if something blocked that opening, the inflator could burst and injure someone on the crew.
A few months ago, the authority called on car companies – this concerns Ford, General Motors, Stellantis, Toyota, Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz and BMW, as well as Tesla, Kia, Hyundai, Porsche and Maserati – for a voluntary recall, but they refused . So NHTSA began steps to order a recall.
The final decision is to be made in January next year. Now the letters that car companies sent to the authority in an effort to waive the mandatory recall have become public. According to Bloomberg, whose reporters saw them, the automakers are arguing that there is not enough evidence to order action on such a large scale.
The General Motors concern, for example, disagrees with the original decision that the inflators are defective. He states that the evidence “they fall far short of the authority’s technical and procedural standards, especially in cases of serious defects”. Ford and the inflator manufacturer itself, ARC Automotive, have a similar attitude.
On the other hand, GM has already recalled about a million Chevrolet Traverse, GMC Acadia, and Buick Enclave model years 2014-2017 for service just because of airbag replacement. Allegedly, it had to do with the inflatables from ARC, which are under scrutiny.
According to earlier information, NHTSA is basing the recall on seven cases of serious injury or death due to ARC inflator rupture. At the same time, she admits that she tested a total of nine hundred of them and not a single one had a problem. The company denies that this is a widespread manufacturing defect – in one case, a foreign object caused the inflator to clog and then tear, while in the others it was a different type of inflator or a piece manufactured elsewhere and elsewhere than those that are supposed to be recalled.
If the authority had actually ordered the recall, it could mean total costs for car manufacturers and the ARC company of up to 10 billion dollars, i.e. 223 billion crowns.
2023-12-25 14:43:00
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