U.S. Regulators Postpone Massive Airbag Recall Upon Further Investigation

Reuters reports that after a back-and-forth that lasted over a year, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced on Wednesday that it will not seek an immediate safety recall for as many as 51 million airbag inflators, many of which are equipped in GM vehicles.

“NHTSA is specifically looking to gather more information on the technical and engineering differences between the inflators as installed into the manufacturers’ respective vehicles, as well as differences in processes among the relevant factories and manufacturing lines,” the agency said on Wednesday.

This issue dates back to October 2023, when GM said more than 20 million GM vehicles may contain faulty airbag inflators. When activated, the airbag inflators from suppliers ARC Automotive and Delphi Automotive carry a risk of explosively launching shrapnel into the vehicle’s interior. Delphi Automotive manufactured about 11 million of the potentially defective inflators under a licensing agreement with ARC Automotive, which supplied the rest.

The NHTSA later proposed a safety recall potentially affecting 52 million airbag inflators, which was opposed by GM, Toyota, Volkswagen, and Stellantis due to the rarity of the defects; one death and seven injuries were reported. GM made a statement saying such a recall would affect “as much as 15% of the over 300 million registered motor vehicles in the United States.”

However, the NHTSA stood by its consideration as recently as July 2024, revising its recall estimate to 51 million inflators. “Common sense demands acknowledging that metal shrapnel projecting at high speeds and causing injury or death presents an unreasonable risk to safety,” NHTSA said at the time.

The airbags in question were manufactured between 2000 and 2018 and supplied to 13 different automakers. Other automakers impacted by the potential defect include Ford, Hyundai, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Porsche, and Jaguar Land Rover.