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With Congress about to hold hearings on why it took General Motors (GM) so long to let millions of car owners know about a potentially deadly ignition switch defect, the auto makers admitted more cars are affected and are recalling almost one million more cars globally.
This announcement comes as investigations into the company's conduct are scheduled to begin. Documents have shown that the car makers knew about the defect as early as 2001, four years before the first affected models went on sale and 13 years before the recall was issued. Several lawmakers also want to know why it took NHTSA so long to examine the problem, and why the agency's Early Warning Reporting system failed to alert investigators to a growing problem.
Details on the recall
In the third wave of the ignition switch recall that was originally announced last month, General Motors announced another recall for 824,000 vehicles in the US and 147,000 worldwide. To date, this brings the total of recalled vehicles to nearly 2.6 million cars. The company admit that the defect has caused at least 12 deaths and 31 car accidents.
General Motors stated that it was expanding it's recall because the company had sold approximately 95,000 of the faulty ignition switches to aftermarket wholesalers and dealers, and doesn't think it's practical to try and track them all down.
General Motors CEO, Mary Barra, commented, “We are taking no chances with safety. Trying to locate several thousand switches in a population of 2.2 million vehicles and distributed to thousands of retailers isn't practical. Out of an abundance of caution, we are recalling the rest of the model years.”
Until the parts are replaced, the company says customers driving affected cars should remove all keys from their keychains, as the added weight may aggravate te problem and help pull the ignition switch from the 'run' to 'accessory' position.
What changes in the recall?
Previously the company said that the ignition switches needed to be replaced in certain model years of the Chevrolet Cobalt, Chevrolet HHR, Pontiac G5, Pontiac Solstice, Saturn Ion and Saturn Sky. The recent update, however has expanded the recall to include all model years of those models.
Replacement parts are scheduled to begin arriving at dealerships across the country on April 7th and earlier this week GM stated that it expected to have enough parts to fix all affected cars by October.