Despite efforts by automakers and U.S. safety regulators to alert vehicle owners of safety recalls beyond the required mail notification, more must be done to address recall effectiveness, says Wayne Mitchell of Stericycle Expert Solutions.
Mitchell is global director of automotive solutions for the firm, where he helps automakers and parts suppliers with various business processes including recall outreach and identifying the status and condition of recalled vehicles.
“Is that vehicle on the road anymore or is it a tin can?” he told Automotive News. “There’s no use mailing to the … last registered owner for two years if that car is crushed and has been recycled.”
NHTSA in summer launched a mobile app called SaferCar that automatically checks for safety recalls and alerts users when a recall has been issued. Hyundai Motor Co. also introduced license plate reader technology through its website for U.S. drivers to access open safety recalls and service campaigns issued by the automaker.
More modernized approaches to alerting consumers of recalls are steps in the right direction, Mitchell said.
“A first-class mail notification that’s required by NHTSA from an initial recall — I don’t believe is going to be cutting it, especially for these older vehicles,” he said. “I believe that it needs to change, and I believe it will change in the near future.”
Staff Reporter Audrey LaForest spoke with Mitchell, 49, about recall trends and predictions. Here are edited excerpts.
Q: What trends or recurring defects have you seen for 2020?
A: There seems to be a lot this year around latches, door locks and hinges. Every year is different, so we don’t see a lot of consistencies between years, but we do see some investigations going on around seat belts and lithium batteries that could give us some insight into possible 2021 issues.
What about vehicle recalls over software or electrical issues?
Any time there’s new technology introduced, there are always going to be issues. As they refine that, it gets improved — year after year after year. There is a lot of new technology that they’re looking at incorporating into these vehicles, more so than there ever has been.
I do see there are going to be more recalls that are software-related, but a lot of those updates can be done through an upload to the vehicle, which some of the [manufacturers] are testing now. It may be the case where the owner doesn’t have to go in. They’ll get notified about the recall and while the vehicle is sitting in the driveway overnight, it can be downloading a software patch to correct that technology.
I do see more and more recalls around being software update fixes, not necessarily just a hard part that’s replaced or electrical components that are replaced. It’s updating software, just like your phone. You plug it in, and they’re fixing a bug.
This year, we’ve seen a concerning trend: electric vehicle-related battery fires. What’s your take on this?
Hopefully they solve those issues before the volume of vehicles becomes widespread. There is a lot of effort and money spent on designing these electric vehicles, but they’re not to the masses yet. They’re still in small populations. There were a lot of learnings around laptop batteries, cellphone batteries.
I don’t know if the technology is the same, but they may take a look at lessons learned with that. What did those manufacturers go through? It’s just on a grander scale, with a vehicle battery being quite a bit larger than those small ones. But I’m hopeful in their testing phase that they’ll get those issues identified and corrected with the lithium batteries before that becomes a scalable vehicle.
Recalls over the faulty Takata airbags continue to garner attention. Has the recall campaign been effective?
More should be done because they’re not there yet. Do I believe you’re going to fix 100 percent of the vehicles? No. There are going to be vehicles that you’re never going to find. They just don’t exist anymore. There may be some people that never respond no matter what you do. But there are a lot of people that become less engaged with the vehicle as it ages.
You buy a brand-new car. You pamper it, and then that car becomes 10, 15 years old, and you really don’t care what happens to it. You don’t do a lot of the maintenance on it. It’s the same thing with the recall. People are busy with their everyday lives. The [manufacturers] have done a lot, and they’ve learned a lot about how to engage with these “nonresponders,” and they continue to do more.
All this learning from Takata is going to help them go forward in what to do with different individuals because it varies. We do know as a vehicle ages, the response rate is less and less and less.
How should automakers address recall notices?
When you buy a new car today, there are a lot of [automakers] that have applications, and they’re testing different ways of in-car notifications or notifications through the application. Some people would prefer phone calls. Some people would prefer an email. The data is as good as what the consumer provided. But it’s the format, right? They may want to be notified through social media. They may want to be notified and engaged through an application that’s connected to your car. This is where the future is going to go, and it’s on its way. We just need to get there, and we need NHTSA support around this.