General Motors is recalling just one Chevrolet Blazer EV crossover because of an issue with its door strikers that might lead to the doors opening during a crash or simply while the vehicle is moving, a document from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) shows.
The recall also affects other models that use the same door strikers, including the combustion-powered Chevrolet Blazer, Chevrolet Equinox, and GMC Terrain, bringing the total number of vehicles affected by the service action to 265.
As per the recall report published by the NHTSA, the door strikers fitted to the affected vehicles were not properly heat-treated to meet GM hardness specifications, making them susceptible to fracture. A quality engineer first raised the issue in November 2023 after a door striker on a 2024 Chevy Equinox fractured during routine side door adjustment on the assembly line at the San Luis Potosi plant in Mexico.
A product investigation was opened a few days later and on December 14, 2023, GM decided to conduct a safety recall. The automaker is not aware of any real-world accidents or incidents that the defective door strikers caused, and the owners of the affected cars will have the issue repaired for free.
In other words, it’s not a big deal, at least as far as the Blazer EV is concerned. That car has its fair share of problems, including a recent stop-sale order that came after we (along with other publications and several customers) reported serious software issues with the electric crossover. But a recall for just one car? Not so much.
However, the rate at which GM is capable of churning out EVs based on its new Ultium platform is a pretty big deal. During the entirety of 2023, fewer than 500 Blazer EVs were sold in the United States, while its platform brother, the more upscale Cadillac Lyriq did much better with a little over 9,000 units sold last year.
In total, GM sold almost 76,000 battery-electric vehicles in 2023, which is almost double what it achieved in 2022, but it’s still way off its goal of moving a whopping 1 million EVs per year in North America by 2025.
So no, this recall is not what we’d call alarming, considering the raft of underlying issues that the American automotive giant has to sort out if it wants to stand out in the age of electrification.
