The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has issued a safety recall for a large number of GM vehicles that may have a faulty airbag malfunction warning light.
The problem: affected vehicles may have a communications gateway module that incorrectly processes a loss of communication with the sensing diagnostic module (SDM), causing the air bag malfunction indicator light to inconsistently illuminate.
The hazards: the airbag malfunction warning light comes on when there is no actual problem with the airbag, the user could be led to believe the vehicle airbag has malfunctioned when in reality, it hasn’t. Conversely, if the user observes the warning light flickering on and off intermittently, seemingly without reason, they may no longer see it as a valid identifier of an airbag malfunction.
The fix: GM dealers will be instructed to update the software in the communications gateway module. These repairs will be performed at no cost to the vehicle owner.
Affected components: communications gateway module, airbag malfunction warning light.
Number of affected vehicles: a total of 285,622 GM vehicles are affected by this airbag malfunction warning light-related issue.
Affected vehicles:
- 2021 Buick Envision
- 2021 Cadillac CT4
- 2021 Cadillac CT5
- 2021 Cadillac Escalade
- 2021 Cadillac Escalade ESV
- 2021 Chevrolet Tahoe
- 2021 Chevrolet Corvette
- 2021 Chevrolet Suburban
- 2021 GMC Yukon
- 2021 GMC Yukon XL
Next steps: Letters notifying owners of the recall are expected to be mailed beginning on July 19, 2021. Owners of affected GM vehicles can also visit my.gm.com/
Contacts:
- NHTSA Campaign Number: 21V421000
- GM recall number: N212338110
- Chevrolet Customer Service: 1-800-222-1020
- GMC Customer Service: 1-800-462-8782
- Cadillac Customer Service: 1-877-248-2080
- NHTSA Toll Free: 1-888-327-4236
- NHTSA (TTY): 1-800-424-9153
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Comments
This article is confused. According to the NHTSA 573 document, the problem is:
“A software problem exists in certain of these vehicles which would cause a sensing diagnostic module (SDM) communications fault to illuminate the airbag malfunction indicator lamp, but only on alternating ignition cycles. As a result, an SDM communications fault would not consistently illuminate the airbag light on every ignition cycle to indicate a problem to the driver.”
Which is a lot more serious than what the article says. The documents also show that it will be offered as an OTA update.
I can confirm the OTA. I just received an OTA on my 21 Suburban. The update number is identical to the GM recall number N212338110.
The update reads as GM-N21-2338110. It came this morning and took 3 attempts to install, but took less than 5 minutes to install once it decided the vehicle was “in the right condition”.
I have a 2014 Chev Equinox that has Srvice Airbag message with chime.
Is there a fix/recall for this?
I have checked recalls and found nothing on it