Recall · 23V215000
Volkswagen Group of America recalled 2 models over air bags
143,053
Vehicles covered
2
Models
5
Model years
March 29, 2023
Filed with NHTSA
AIR BAGS:SENSOR:OCCUPANT CLASSIFICATION:FRONT PASSENGER
- The defect
- Volkswagen Group of America, Inc. (Volkswagen) is recalling certain 2018-2021 Atlas and 2020 Atlas Cross Sport vehicles. The passenger occupant detection system (PODS) may experience a fault in the wiring and deactivate the front passenger air bag when the seat is occupied.
- What it can cause
- A deactivated passenger air bag increases the risk of injury during a crash.
- What the dealer does
- Dealers will replace the PODS sensor mat and wiring harness, free of charge. Owner notification letters were mailed on March 22, 2024. Owners may contact Volkswagen's customer service at 1-800-893-5298. Volkswagen's number for this recall is 69FB.
- NHTSA's note
- Owners may also contact the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Vehicle Safety Hotline at 1-888-327-4236 (TTY 1-800-424-9153), or go to www.nhtsa.gov.
The repair is free, whatever the age or mileage of the vehicle, and whether or not you are the original owner.
Which vehicles
A recall reaches a range of VINs inside these model years, not every car built in them. Yours may not be covered even if it is listed here, and the only way to find out is NHTSA's own VIN lookup .
How this campaign compares
At 143,053 vehicles this is a bigger campaign than 94% of the 19,818 vehicle recalls filed since 1995 whose size NHTSA published. The middle campaign on file covers 472. It covers model years 2018 to 2021, so the oldest vehicles on it were 5 model years old when the defect was reported to NHTSA.
Volkswagen vehicles have been recalled over the air bags 28 times before this, most recently in December 2022 as 22V945000. That is not evidence the earlier repair failed.
This site holds the complaint record for all 5 model years the campaign names. Their owners have filed 1,526 complaints with NHTSA, 682 of them before this campaign was filed. 333 of those name the air bags, the system this recall is about — a count of complaints, not of this defect. The earliest of them reached NHTSA in November 2017, 5 years before this filing.
The vehicles on this campaign carry 22 other recalls published here, the newest being: 26V590000 (steering), 24V464000 (air bags), 23V671000 (air bags), 22V815000 (tires).
Check your own car
A VIN check is the only answer for a specific vehicle, and it also shows every other open recall on it, which is usually the reason it is worth doing rather than reading one campaign.
Filed by Volkswagen Group of America, Inc. with NHTSA on March 29, 2023 as campaign 23V215000. Every word of the defect, consequence and remedy above is NHTSA's published record of that filing, not a summary of it.
Compiled and maintained by guarledes . Data last checked 2023-03-29.
Independent developer and analyst