Faulty airbags: 80% of the problem “resolved by Christmas”, promises the boss of Stellantis

Carlos Tavares, the CEO of Stellantis, returned this Friday morning to the affair of the defective airbags installed on the Citroën C3 and DS3 in an interview on RTL. The radio station met him during a filming of the show Turbo on M6 which will be broadcast on Sunday, September 22 at 11:20.

“I would like to take this opportunity to apologise to our customers, to DS and to Citroën, for the disruption this is obviously causing to their lives,” he explained, adding: “What I am telling them is that we have put in place considerable resources, 60,000 courtesy cars throughout Europe, I think 25,000 in France, doubling of airbag production capacity, 100,000 cars realigned in the space of a few weeks, and we hope to reach the 200,000 mark in October.”

167,000 airbags still need to be replaced

To date in France, 91,000 airbags have been replaced on Citroën C3s and DS3s. That leaves 167,000 airbags to be changed. “We are going to ask other Stellantis brands that are not Citroën and DS to help increase the intervention capacity to realign these famous airbags. We have gone so far as to set up teams that come to our customers’ homes to change the airbags,” he added, setting the goal of having “resolved 80% of the problem by Christmas.”

Carlos Tavares pointed out that this airbag problem does not only concern the Stellantis group. “We have exceeded 100 million cars equipped with Takata airbags recalled worldwide,” he emphasized. BMW has just announced in France the launch of a new recall for airbags, i.e. 266,000 cars.