Hyundai has announced a new recall that involved 239,000 vehicles in total. Recent models of the Accent, as well as the Elantra, will need a special cap that Hyundai says will eliminate the risk of injury in the event of a crash. Without it, there’s a chance that a seat belt pretensioner in these cars could explode.
The Korean carmaker told the NHTSA that it is aware of three incidents involving the exploding seat belt tensioners at this stage of the investigation. The first was reported to the brand back in September of 2021 and it immediately triggered a full-scale investigation.
According to documents submitted to the NHTSA, it involved a 2021 Hyundai Elantra “where the driver-side seat belt pretensioner allegedly deployed abnormally causing metal fragments to enter the rear cabin and resulting in injury to an occupant’s leg.”
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Throughout the next few months, Hyundai continued to investigate the issue and searched for other similar cases. On December 3rd, 2021, a second occurrence was reported, this time in Puerto Rico. Somewhat surprisingly, the pretensioner in this case was produced 13 months previous to the one from the first incident.
Then, in February of this year, a third incident was reported involving the exploding pretensioner that happened in Singapore. Before this recall, Hyundai had already issued other recalls in hopes of covering the affected vehicles in question. Due to the widespread nature of these reports, this new recall covers even more vehicles.
While a specific and exact cause is still unknown, Hyundai did employ a third-party engineering firm, Exponent, to come up with a threat mitigating solution. Ultimately, they identified a micro gas generator inside the pretensioner as the cause of explosion.
Exponent has created a cap that will secure that micro gas generator and eliminate stress sites that could potentially increase the risk of an abnormal deployment. It should also be noted that the three incidents have only occurred in connection with a crash or collision so there’s no reason to expect these to just go off randomly.
Hyundai has already begun the process of notifying owners through first-class mail and they’ll fit the cap to affected vehicles at no charge to the customer. Owners of 2021 or 2022 Accent models or 2021 to 2023 Elantra models can contact their local dealer to find out if their vehicle is affected before receiving the letter.
