How do car manufacturers come up with fixes to Safety Recalls so quickly? (It’s like they knew the better, safer way all along?)
At least some large auto manufacturers have teams who do nothing but track down and develop fixes for recalls. Remember that they are often aware of the issue long before they get around to issuing a recall, so they, or their component provider, have had plenty of time to figure out the root problem and come up with a solution. If they could have avoided the recall before shipping the vehicle, they would have.
Does the national transport safety board keep manufacturers up to date on the issues they encounter? “Hey, we’ve had 3 reports this week of a Pinto bursting into flames. Make that 4 now…” Plus presumably investigations. Someone is tracking anything that causes significant damage or injury, plus I presume other reports. I suspect too the company is obliged to report what their dealers report if they see patterns.
So by the time it’s determined “this is a widespread problem” they also have a good idea what needs to be fixed.
This got me thinking about recalls in the UK. Theoretically, they would be instigated when the DVLA spots a recurring problem and tells a manufacturer to sort it out. In practice, I get the impression that recalls happen when the pressure of bad publicity gets too much for a manufacturer to bear.
I own a 2015 Mondeo (Fusion in the US) and there is a recall relating to the electric steering. In the US, Fusions were recalled and the problem was resolved, a long time before it happened here. Since it was safety-related. I would have expected Ford to instigate a recall as soon as they knew about it. In the event, it took pressure from owners and some publicity in the trade papers to gee them into action.
Back in the 1970s and 80s, I remember hearing about foot-dragging concerning recalls. It seems companies are much quicker to admit to a problem and come out with a fix for it than in the past, although that may just be because I am more aware of car issues now than I was back then.
Often, a component comes from more than one supplier, and it might be just one supplier who’s making the defective part. If that’s the case, then you can fix it right away by just dropping that one bad supplier.
In other cases, you can fix it by making that part just a bit sturdier, which means bigger and heavier. They could have made it that way to begin with, but if they make everything bigger and heavier, then the whole car is that much heavier, and so more expensive and less efficient.
A particularly famous recent recall is the Takata airbag recall, which affected cars from a number of manufacturers. In that case, the defects were due to poor manufacturing and material storage at a plant which made the bags’ inflators, not a flaw in design, so the “fix” was straightfoward: simply replace the defective inflator parts. The issue was that, the recall was so wide-ranging, that it took several years for enough new parts to be available.
I remember working at a dealership years ago as a mechanic. I’m pretty sure we even had some nonsafety related recalls where we would fix it for free if the customer complained, but we didn’t just fix them all proactively. Sometimes we would notice the issue then point it out to the customer and tell them to go complain about it so we could fix it.
Have you not seen Fight Club? The narrator works for a major manufacturer trying to determine whether the company should be issuing a recall based on the severity of the level of lawsuits they might expect if they don’t issue a recall. The companies all know exactly what’s wrong, and have known for a long time, and they’ve been working on a solution in case they need to cover their ass. These things don’t just happen out of the blue; the major question is how large the problem is, and how severe the damage is when the problem occurs. That takes a while to investigate, and such was the narrator’s job.
If you think that’s a rather depressing job to have, that’s, like, half the point of the movie.
This. And the fact that a defect pops up brings the problem into the spotlight.
And tracking has gotten much better/fastener in today’s world. Problems that might have been brushed off as “one of a kind” are now recognized as a pattern.
Sometimes defects are the intersection of how the manufacturer THOUGHT how the product would be used - versus how the product was ACTUALLY used. Case in point - there was an x-ray machine where a certain series of keystrokes - including rapid cancellations - would bring the x-ray head down onto the patient with full force. The manufacturer never expected the technician would cancel one program and immediately try to enter another. Hindsight is 20/20.
Heck, there was a fairly famous recall of cars for “defective” ignition switches. This was in the days of a mechanical keyhole on the side of the steering column into which you inserted a traditional mechanical key and turned it to start & run the engine.
Turns out the switch was not designed for the many people who had a pound or more of other crap dangling from the keyring holding their car’s key. The long-term effect of the excess weight was the switch wore mechanically and was torqued downwards all the time. Which led to IIRC wire chafing and short circuits as well as inability to turn the key at all.
Was it “defective” or are people idiots who were misusing / abusing a reasonable design? Darn good question.
Yes, the engineers who didn’t test the ignition in real world conditions.
I am reminded of a customer who took their new car back to the dealer because of excessive fuel consumption. This was in the days of manual chokes, and the customer thought that knob was ideal for hanging shopping bags on so they didn’t fall over.
I heard that one too, but it was the customer’s purse.