Almost 63 million cars were sent back to repair shops as a result of safety issues in the US in 2014 – more than twice as many as in 2004, the year which previously counted the highest number of recalls. Almost half of these safety issues were related to passenger protection systems, followed by problems with electronic components and brake defects.
In Germany, too, the number of recalls has sharply increased: 1.9 million cars were recalled in 2014. This is almost twice as many as in the previous year (2013: 1.1 million). Subaru, Toyota, Mercedes, BMW or VW – basically every auto manufacturer is affected, regardless of whether they are based in America, Asia or Europe. Most of the problems in Germany were again linked to passenger protection systems. Defective airbags were responsible for a large number of recalls: they had been delivered to multiple manufacturers by one and the same supplier.
It's not easy to explain the reasons for this negative trend. On the one hand, the automobile industry is extremely competitive. Car manufacturers are reacting to this by shortening development cycles even further, cutting production times and producing vehicles on an increasingly global scale, with more and more suppliers. At the same time, technical complexity is increasing and the risk of errors is growing. Almost one in two recalls today is related to electronic components. Another reason is that the same components are built into various vehicle types in parallel, which was the case with the airbags in 2014, for example. However, recalls are also a sign that safety has increased: manufacturers now dare to openly admit errors rather than hiding them.