Cars: Chrysler, voluntary recall for 600,000 jeeps and minivans

Chrysler, recently confirmed the recall of 683,000 Wrangler Jeeps and minivans. The voluntary recall is due to the brake-line and power sliding door issues. Previously, Toyota, suffered much over the "sticky accelerator" pedal with some reported road accident due to that failure.

Now, Chrysler is stepping ahead by informing the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration about the recall. Though, there have been any related road accidents prior the recall, Chrysler just announced over a potential failures discovered on 2007~2010 Jeep Wranglers and 2008~2009 Chrysler Town & Country and Dodge Grand Caravan minivans.

The potential failures for the Jeep Wranglers, is that, the brake line could come in contact with the inner-fender lining. That could lead to reduce braking performance over time. While for the minivans, an interior wiring could come in contact with the sliding power door and thus could result to short circuit which could also lead to fire.

What's the mess this time?

What happened with Toyota was a disaster. This time with Chrysler, was very clever. What are the chances that you'll be experiencing a "sticking accelerator" pedal? Actually, such failures with cars can happen anytime. The possible would be, over time. The more mileage your car has, the more prone to failures it will be.

Supposedly, in manufacturing, before you launch a product line. It will go through series of pre-production tests. These tests occur during prototyping which is in development stage. In most cases, every configuration is well thought and reviewed rigorously. As a matter of fact, such failures are very basic and simple in such a way.

You have FMEA (Failure Mode and Effect Analysis). In pre-production, all possible failures in every production line configuration can be determined already. You also have DOE (Design of Experiments) a method of analyzing the limits of a certain unit or device. I wonder such car mechanism failures were not detected anyway. I have said that Chrysler was clever, because learning from Toyota is very beneficial.  So, I guess, right from there they have gone back to drawing boards and started digging if it could happen anytime. And, it did, a possible disaster was discovered.

The only, thing unacceptable though, their design problems were found out there in the field. Out there, when we have already spent thousand of dollars for such expensive cars. In short, the end users are the unlucky test subjects. Ironically, we've seen in some Manufacturers, using crash test dummies, spending number of their units just to determine is products integrity, and yet we heard recall for basic defects that can be foretold even before it was launched in the market.