2014 is not turning out to be a good year for General Motors Co. In the wake of the lawsuits and probe over its vehicle recall of its small cars, the US automaker is now adding 51,640 SUVs to the cars that has defective parts. According to its announcement on Saturday, SUVs including 2014 models of Buick Enclave, Chevrolet Traverse and GMC Acadia have a software issue that could lead to a faulty reading on the range by as much as one quarter of a tank, CNN reported. Should customers who would run out of fuel without any warning, GM said the affected vehicles will stall, exposing them to the risk of a crash.
GM has said that it will be reprogram the defect software for free.
CNN said that GM has gained backlash both from the public and lawmakers when it recalled 1.6 million vehicles all over the world due to a problem with its ignition switch. It was known that the engineers of the automaker had identified the problem as early as 2004, but it remained a puzzle on why the company waited until February of this year to issue a recall on the vehicles. Officially, GM acknowledged that there are 12 deaths that has been linked to the faulty ignition, but claims had provided a much higher figure. GM since then has doubled the number of vehicles recalled since it first announcement.
In a videotaped message for GM employees, which was made public also in March, new GM chief executive officer Mary Barra said the probes by US Congress and a criminal investigation should not come as a shock to anyone. She said. She nonetheless assured that the company is keen to changing how recalls are decided and managed in the future.
"After all, something went wrong with our process in this instance and terrible things happened. As a member of the GM family and as a mom with a family of my own, this really hits home for me," Barra stated.
