After a fatal accident in France calls Stellantis Hundreds of thousands of vehicles back. The company imposed an immediate Europe-wide driving ban (“Stop Drive”) for the models Citroën C3 and DS 3 of the construction years 2009 to 2019, which are equipped with takata airbags.
The owners are no longer allowed to use the vehicles for the time being and should contact their dealer. In Europe, the recall for around 440,000 vehicles applies in Germany For just more than 56,000 cars. According to the company, other models of the group are not affected.
It is the first major corporate crisis for the only recently elected to office CEO Antonio Filosa (51). The Italian manager takes over the group in a difficult location. The share price has been in the downward trend for months and has lost 13 percent in the past 30 days alone.
On June 11, a 37-year-old woman had a fatal accident after having crashed into a guardrail with a C3 on a expressway. In the impact, the vehicle’s airbag exploded and fatally injured the woman.
The incident caused a sensation and called the French Transport Minister Philippe Tabarot (54). According to reports from the “FAZ”, he appointed the managers of Citroën and, according to his own statements, called for the now applicable driving ban.
For years there have been problems with takata airbags
The vehicles affected by the driving ban were already part of a ongoing recall of Stellantis that the group started a year ago. It is about defective airbags from the Japanese manufacturer Takata. The company has vehicles from different manufacturers, Among other things, VW and Audi, supplied with faulty airbags for years. According to media reports, more than 100 million vehicles have had to be recalled in the past decades.
Persistent heat and high humidity can make the chemicals contained in the airbag gas generators over time. In an accident, the generator can explode when triggering the airbag. As a result, metal parts with high force can be thrown through the vehicle interior and seriously injure it. So far, according to the French Ministry of Transport, twelve people have died in connection with Takata Airbags, eleven of them overseas.
As early as 2014, the American traffic safety authority NHTSA TAKATA called for the recall of all frontairbags after faulty triggering five deaths. In 2017, the company had to pay a fine of one billion dollars, three managers of the company were charged.
Transport Minister Tabarot announced that the matter to the end and called the situation “unacceptable and scandalous”.