Hyundai missed a total of 44,396 crossovers in a recall that relates to a risk of fires and must now issue a new recall for those vehicles. As a result, owners of the 2018 Santa Fe Sport are being asked to park outside and away from structures until a repair is performed.
The recall relates to ABS modules in which an electrical short can develop. If that happens, the unit can catch fire while it’s driving or, alarmingly, when it’s parked, too. Hyundai believes that just one percent of the vehicles included in the recall are likely to develop this fault, but must take steps to prevent that from happening.
If this issue sounds familiar, it’s because we’ve already covered it, though it was a “special consumer alert” when we wrote about this issue in February. At the time, nearly half a million vehicles (among them the Santa Fe, the Kia K900, and the Kia Sportage) were included in the alert.
More: Nearly Half A Million Kia And Hyundai Owners Advised To Park Their Cars Outside Over Fire Risk
Since then, Hyundai found a solution to the fault and issued a recall. Unfortunately, in August, it became aware of another “thermal event” involving a 2018 Santa Fe Sport whose VIN had not been included in the initial recall.
In October, Hyundai was in the midst of investigating why the vehicle had been omitted from the recall, when another report of fire came in. Eventually, the automaker determined that a Kia plant in Georgia had “inadvertently excluded applicable model year 2018 Santa Fe Sport vehicles produced between May 2017 and May 2018″ from the recall.
Hyundai is now facing pressure from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Office of Defects Investigation to look for ways to ensure that omissions like these don’t happen again.
In addition, owners of the Santa Fe Sports will start receiving letters from Hyundai by first class mail starting on December 26. These letters will ask owners to return their vehicle to the dealer, where the ABS mutli-fuse will be replaced by a revised unit to mitigate the risk of fire.
