Hyundai Expands Exploding Seatbelt Recall to 240K Vehicles

May 31, 2022—Hyundai has expanded a recall that was initially announced in March. 

According to Yahoo!, this recall is in regards to seatbelt pretensioners that can reportedly explode in the event of an accident.

The recall was originally targeted at just a few hundred vehicles. In April, it was bumped up to the thousands. Now, it sits at approximately 239,000 models of 2019-2022 Accents and 2021-2023 Elantras.

In these vehicles, it appears that the pretensioners for seatbelt retractor mechanisms may not perform as intended. In the event of an accident, the small explosive devices that these pretensioners rely on may engage in an uncontrolled explosion that could release shrapnel into the cabin of the vehicle.

Hyundai is aware of three of these incidents. This issue appears to only occur in Accent and Elantra models. 

Two incidents have occurred in the United States with an Accent and Elantra and one has occurred in and Elantra in Singapore. 

The problem seems to be isolated to how the vehicle behaves in the event of a crash, and Hyundai has noted that the same part in other vehicles has not failed. 

Hyundai believes that the issue stems from a mechanism failure rather than just a "bad batch" of vehicles, thus the decision was made to expand this recall to reach more potentially affected customers. 

Hyundai is currently in the process of reaching out to vehicle owners that fall under this recall.