this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2023
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I am hoping it is more of a "they should have seen this coming" kind of thing. In such a way that they should have had ample time before the line was made active to install it.
When they engineer cars, they try to make them as cheap as possible. In all likelihood, they knew of the risk at the time of engineering but thought it low enough to go ahead to production. Post production, they probably found a an overlooked circumstance that would cause failure, one that is common enough that it would cause costly wrongful death lawsuits. Then they decided on a recall.
There are plenty of "known issues" with current vehicles on the road today but they are calculated to occur infrequently enough that the car companies won't get class action suits, and the one off wrongful death suits they do get will be few enough so as to be calculated into the cost of doing business.
Somehow, I still enjoy driving.
Just to expand on this: a car company doesn't do the detail design for supplied components. They give general requirements like loads, lifespan, and specs about mating surfaces, but the supplier has more knowledge about designing their products than the car company. However, the car company can still override the supplier's advice or decisions about design characteristics. They are the customer, after all.
TIL. Thanks!
To clarify, the line had not been handed to production yet. However, a change like this takes time. A typical new program launch takes something like 2 years between initial request to start of production. Obviously, sourcing and integrating one machine doesn't take that long. But any new part requires that every machine be re-evaluated for quality on that new part and the line as a whole needs to be re-tested. Even if the design change is small.