Hyundai have found themselves in a pickle. Barely a week after Volvo announced a recall of some of their S series models, Hyundai is the new automaker to find themselves in a tight corner.
According to documents filed by Hyundai at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, it needs to recall 466,109 Sonata sedans for faulty turn signals. The affected models are 2015-2017 Sonata and the 2016-2017 Sonata Hybrid and plug-in hybrid models.
It’s quite a curious case, if a driver signals to turn right, the car may show the left turn signal flashing in front and at the rear of the sedan. As you can imagine, that’s quite confusing to the other drivers on the road and could certainly contribute to a crash.
The faulty signals are a result of a glitch in the Smart Junction Box software. When the driver turns the signal stalk to one side, the software may interpret it as the opposite side. Fortunately, no crashes have been notified to Hyundai so far, unlike in Volvo’s case where their faulty airbag had already caused the death of one driver by the time they were issuing the recall.
Hyundai already have a solution in the form of a free software update on the Smart Junction Box. From Nov 19, owners of the affected sedans will start being contacted. Their local dealers will have technicians ready to do the aforementioned software update effectively fixing the glitch.