DETROIT -- General Motors is recalling 5.9 million vehicles in the U.S. after losing an appeal of a government-ordered callback related to a safety issue affecting millions of air bags and almost every major automaker.
The company said Monday that it will comply with a ruling by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to recall the vehicles after the agency denied the appeal.
GM had argued the design and integration of Takata air bags into its vehicles made the risk of defective equipment inconsequential, but the safety agency denied that petition and forced the automaker to abide by the recall order.
The recall is expected to cost $1.2 billion over a period of several years, including about $400 million in 2021, said Dan Flores, a company spokesman. The recall totals 7 million vehicles globally, with most sold in the U.S. and some 544,000 in Canada, he said.
The automaker had petitioned the agency four times since 2016 to avoid recalls, contending the air bag inflator canisters have been safe on the road and in testing. But the agency on Monday denied the petitions, saying the inflators still run the risk of exploding.
Owners complained to the agency that the company was placing profits over safety.
The company said the recalls will be phased in based on replacement inflator availability.
Drivers can check to see if their vehicles have been recalled by going to https://www.nhtsa.gov/recalls and keying in their 17-digit vehicle identification numbers.
Exploding Takata inflators caused the largest series of auto recalls in U.S. history, involving at least 63 million inflators. The U.S. government said that as of September, more than 11.1 million had not been fixed. About 100 million inflators have been recalled worldwide.
Takata used volatile ammonium nitrate to create a small explosion to fill an air bag in a crash. But the chemical can deteriorate when exposed to heat and humidity, and it can explode with too much pressure, blowing apart a metal canister and spewing shrapnel.
Twenty-seven people have been killed worldwide by the exploding inflators, including 18 in the U.S.
The safety agency's decision is a major step in drawing the Takata saga to a close. It means that all Takata ammonium nitrate inflators in the U.S. will be recalled, the agency said. Earlier this year, the agency decided against a recall of inflators with a moisture-absorbing chemical called a dessicant. The agency said it would monitor those inflators and take action if problems arise.
GM will recall full-size pickups and SUVs from the 2007 through 2014 model years, including the Chevrolet Silverado 1500, 2500 and 3500 pickups. The Silverado is GM's top-selling vehicle and the second-best-selling vehicle in the U.S. Also covered are the Chevrolet Suburban, Tahoe and Avalanche; the Cadillac Escalade; the GMC Sierra 1500, 2500 and 3500; and the GMC Yukon.
FOUR-YEAR STUDY
It took the agency more than four years to arrive at its decision.
It said in a statement that it analyzed data on the air bags, including engineering and statistical analyses, aging tests and field data.
"Based on this information and information provided to the petition's public docket, NHTSA concluded that the GM inflators in question are at risk of the same type of explosion after long-term exposure to high heat and humidity as other recalled Takata inflators," the agency said.
The company has 30 days to give the agency a proposed schedule for notifying vehicle owners and starting the recall, the statement said.
GM said that although it believes a recall isn't warranted based on the factual and scientific records, it will abide by the agency's decision.
Flores said Monday that none of the inflators have blown apart in the field or in laboratory testing. But he said GM wants to avoid a drawn-out fight with the government.
"Although we are confident that the inflators in the GMT900 vehicles do not pose an unreasonable risk to safety, continue to perform as designed in the field and will continue to perform as designed in line with the results of our accelerated aging studies, we will abide by NHTSA's decision to maintain the trust and confidence of customers and regulators," he said in an email.
INFLATOR DEBATE
In a 2019 petition to the agency, GM said the inflators were designed to its specifications and are safe, with no explosions even though nearly 67,000 air bags have deployed in the field. The inflators, it said, have larger vents and steel end caps to make them stronger.
But Takata declared the GM front passenger inflators defective under a 2015 agreement with the government.
The agency hired air bag chemical expert Harold Blomquist, who holds 25 air bag patents, to review the data, and he concluded that the GM air bags were similar to other Takata inflators that had exploded.
Test results for the GM inflators included abnormally high-pressure events "indicative of potential future rupture risk," the agency said in documents. "These findings illustrate that GM's inflators have a similar, if not identical, degradation continuum" to other Takata inflators that have exploded, the agency wrote.
Flores said GM already has purchased 1.6 million replacement inflators made by ZF-TRW that do not use ammonium nitrate.
EARNING TRUST
Laurie Ablett of Redding, Calif., said she's been nervous about driving her 2007 Chevrolet Avalanche pickup since finding out about the recall order four years ago. She bought a Tesla Model 3 electric car for her daily transportation.
She was happy to hear about the recall but said GM will have to earn back her trust.
"If they want me to be loyal to them like Tesla, then GM needs to stand by their products as well and not put my life in jeopardy," she said. "I feel like they were disregarding my life, like they didn't value me as a customer."
The news, coupled with GM announcing it was abandoning legal efforts to end California's right to set its own clean-air standards, helped to push GM's shares up 4% Monday to close at $44.77. Earlier in the day, the stock hit $45.16, its highest level in more than two years. GM's stock has more than doubled in value since April.
The previous Takata recalls drove the Japanese company into bankruptcy, and criminal charges were brought against it. Eventually it was purchased by a Chinese-owned auto-parts supplier.
Information for this article was contributed by Tom Krisher of The Associated Press and by Chester Dawson of Bloomberg News.