Jaguar Land Rover is set to recall more than 250,000 SUVs sold in the US over safety concerns, according to reports from Reuters. The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said on Thursday that an air bag defect, potentially causing non-deployment and increasing the risk of injury in a crash, has led to the recalling.
A total of 250,857 cars, concerning specific variants from several models by Land Rover, including the Defender, Discovery and the Range Rover lineup will be recalled by the Tata Motors-owned automaker. The main culprit behind the recall is the cockspring connector inside the driver’s airbag, which can corrode and prevent the airbag from deploying in case of an accident.
With the recall, JLR dealers are said to apply a protective lubricant gel to the connector terminals to avoid corrosion and alleviate the problem. This will be free of any charges, the NHTSA said.
This comes after JLR identified North America as its primary growth market in a recent Investor Day conference. The Tata Motors-owned company, which includes SUV behemoth Land Rover and its sportier sister company Jaguar, is also in talks with the Stellantis group to jointly develop vehicles in the US. The company has temporarily halted sale for unsold affected vehicles while the said measures are applied to them, as per the report.