As 2024 rounds the last few bends towards the finish line, it’s time to reflect on the year that was. We’ve seen scandals and controversy and, as always, a whole lot of recalls. That raises a question—which automaker has had the most recalls?
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is in charge of handling recalls in the automotive industry. The federal agency maintains a database of recalls and related statistics on its Datahub page. This makes it easy to see which automakers have issued the most recalls in any given time period.
Sadly, the ever-troubled Stellantis brands appear to be topping the charts here once again. NHTSA breaks down the results by the overarching automaker. On the chart below, Stellantis covers Jeep, Dodge, and Ram (plus Fiat products like Alfa and Fiat and Maserati). The company issued a full 72 recalls this calendar year to take the crown.
We’ve seen that Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge, and Ram have all had issues in recent years. Jeep’s paint issues have been well-documented, never mind the disaster that is the Wrangler’s manual transmission. Brake issues on some Dodge models were concerning, too. Not every quality issue turns into a recall, but the Stellantis brands have all had plenty to pick from of late.
Stellantis was followed closely by the Ford Motor Company, which issued 62 recalls of its own in 2024. Some of these were minor, like 28,679 cars missing their airbag decals. Others were more serious, like 2,490 vehicles affected by a rapid oil leak.
Third place, with 59 recalls, went to Forest River, Inc., a company that produces recreational vehicles and commercial trucks. This will surprise no one who reads this website. BMW and General Motors rounded at the top five with 36 and 33 recalls respectively.
However, if you rank by the number of cars recalled, the list looks a little different. As covered by Carscoops, Tesla led the rankings in this regard (Honda and Ford were tops last year). Despite issuing just 15 recalls this year, they covered a total of 5,135,697 cars. Stellantis still came second, with 4,722,452 units affected, with Ford a close third at 4,370,701. Honda/Acura and General Motors came in fourth and fifth, with 3.8 million and 1.8 million recalled vehicles respectively.
These aren’t outright reliability studies or end-user surveys. We’re just looking at which automakers had the most post-production problems that had to be rectified to a degree where NHTSA was notified. In pure numbers, Honda’s quite high up the list, given its usual reputation for reliability. It might have had only 18 recalls, but 3.8 million is a lot of cars to sort out. Meanwhile, Toyota had 16 recalls, but they only covered 1.2 million cars in comparison.
It’s also worth noting that these days, a recall does not necessarily mean a major repair, or an in-person repair at all. For example, in Tesla’s case, a great many of those “recalled” units were fixed with simple over-the-air (OTA) updates. For now, NHTSA does not differentiate different “types” of recall, so even OTA repairs can still fall under the banner of an official recall.
It’s worth noting that this data is only complete as of the time of writing—December 23, 2024. There’s a small chance that a wildly impactful recall will be issued in the remaining eight days of the year, but don’t count on it. Most automakers have likely sent their engineering teams home for the holidays at this point.
Overall, recalls are no fun—for automakers and owners alike. Customers want cars they can rely on—cars that work out of the box. Automakers don’t want to see cars coming back to dealerships with problems, because diagnosis and repairs are expensive. Ultimately, it appears some brands are far better than others at avoiding the dreaded recall—something worth keeping in mind next time you’re shopping for a new car.
Image credits: NHTSA via screenshot
I think a major point missed in this discussion is the % of vehicles recalled vs number sold. If Stellantis sells 12 million vehicles and Ford sells 3 million over the same time frame and Stellantis has 4.7 million vehicles affected and Ford has 4.3, which is worse off?
I mean of course the type of recall is very important and most I’ve had to have done are negligible.
As a Tesla owner, meh. They push an update, the car installs it and life goes on. It’s just not a thing to worry about.
The Toyota RAV4 recall for the incorrect battery size is a lot more inconvenient. I have to actually take it to the dealer. Waah! Oh, first world problems.
Over the air programming does not fix mechanical problems.
Very true. That said, Tesla’s recalls have mostly been able to be fixed OTA.
I wonder if any of the automakers will start trying to hide these recalls in those OTA’s they send out. Like Apple recently did with their 18.2 or .1 whichever update, they pushed out RCS messaging updates and never really saw anything about that until I texted somebody and it showed bubbles of them responding.
It would be interesting to see recalls in terms of percentage of vehicles sold.
Interesting that Stellantis on a ancient platform can have so many recalls yet Ford having multiple recalls on every new vehicle they launched had less? I’m guessing the scope of the recalls wasn’t even looked at.
There should definitely be a ranking or at least a categorization, something like: (legitimate) safety, major drivetrain or electrical, and minor (dumb, entirely optional bullshit). I’ve had cars with mostly the latter recalls, like a possible missing washer on a wiper arm (checked, it was there), a hatch that could open at speeds over a few mph if one were to somehow hold the hatch release button for several seconds while driving (checked for the hell of it as I wasn’t getting it fixed either way, and it didn’t open, but what if I needed to have a passenger throw cargo out the back at pursuers? An unlikely scenario, but so’s accidentally triggering a release), and I have a few open OTA recall updates (which I’d have to enable communication for) on my GR86 for the stupid touchscreen that takes about an hour and a half to complete while the car is running and reportedly doesn’t fix its one actual problem: occasional, random 10 second disconnects of Carplay. (Why would the Universally Incompetent Programmers fix an actual problem?) There’s also one to replace the tail lights because, if they’re hit by a certain angle of the sun that I rarely encounter, the indicator can rapid flash like an older car when a bulb was out. The genius of modern car electronics. I’m sure the reduced electrical load of those LEDs are saving so much fuel that they’re worth the extra material, expense, and waste of entire unit replacement due to the minor failure of a part that used to be fixed by a $2 bulb (that were unaffected by sun angles and couldn’t brick entire vehicles like that infamous Ford Lightning). I should probably get that one done, but it requires going to the dealer and sitting around until they can get to it. I doubt they’ll just hand me the replacements to swap myself in 10 minutes (and get to keep the old ones as spares).
Severity of recall should be scored and tracked. My Civic needs that “grease” on it’s steering rack recall. Fine. But if I had a new Tundra or a Ford where the motor would crap out while I’m making payments for 3-6 months as they rectify the situation. That’s a lot less fine by me.
“Most automakers have likely sent their engineering teams home for the holidays at this point.”
Ha. That would have been nice.
I had my workload “re-prioritised” with a rush job yesterday, so my nice relaxed Christmas Eve is now going to a nightmare. I should probably get off the internet…
do tell
or is this like a Fight Club moment: “Which automaker?”
*pause*
“A major one.”
I’m contractually forbidden to mention my employer on the internet.
But you would know them.
I’m sure they’d spot you imediately if you broke that ‘rule’, even though it’s unclear to me whether “Captain” or “Muppet” is your surname.
In my case it’s “Roadster”
🙂
The likelihood of detection is low, but it’s gross misconduct and therefore instant dismissal, so I’m not taking the risk.
Obviously my surname is Muppet. I was demoted to Captain after designing a part that was responsible for a recall of every example of a particular car. Although the fix was to replace it with the part I’d originally designed that was rejected due to cost, so my feelings of guilt and lament are tinged with rage.
here’s to hoping you can get back to Major before retirement. Better pay, and all that.
NHTSA needs to stop trying to make “air bags” as two words happen. It’s actually confusing; “airbag” as a safety device that explodes in your face on impact is ONE word, dammit, and “air bag” as two words should ONLY EVER be used to describe an air suspension component that fails to the tune of four figures.
Damn, back when Lido was in charge, Chrysler had the best safety-related recall record of any domestic automaker, how far things have fallen
Of course, that was a somewhat misleading statistic, but, hell, it sold a lot of Arieses and Reliants, so who cares?
Yeah, go back in time far enough to where car software or electronics weren’t a thing, and having ignition switches kill people was met with a shrug, the whole “recall” concept is called into question
“For now, NHTSA does not differentiate different “types” of recall, so even OTA repairs can still fall under the banner of an official recall.”
They really should make this distinction though.
Yeah, I deal with recall tracking for the work fleet, and for whatever issues we’ve had with Teslas, not a single one has had a recall elevate to where it had any impact on us. And then as alluded to, there are varying degrees of severity – reprogramming the rear view camera because it defaults to the wrong view is wildly different from potentially catching on fire or something. Also, one the public might not appreciate is potential downtime, some fixes take 6+ months to materialize.
I have mixed feelings. I think there’s a ton of nuance that’s just really hard to cover.
For example–it feels wrong (to me, anyway) to give a software update that makes some change to charge/discharge rates to prevent the battery from lighting on fire the same severity as whatever that Tesla recall was where a warning wasn’t in a large enough font.
Both break the rules! Both are problems!….but putting them in the same category feels weird.
Similarly, say you have some EV that has an adjustable suspension, but it is discovered that its sporty mode creates a fire risk. If the issue is fixed by the manufacturer choosing the cheap option and simply disabling that mode (and never making some mechanical fix to allow it again), what would you call that?
It very much feels like a “herding cats” situation, or something.