GM Quick to Resolve Safety Concerns in HD Pickup Trucks
Jul 21, 2010
Toyota could learn a thing or two from General Motors. Less than a week after PickupTrucks.com discovered a potentially dangerous glitch in the hill-hold assist feature equipped in GM heavy-duty trucks, GM has already identified the problem and issued a fix.
PickupTrucks.com explains the problem: “Hill-hold assist automatically applies the vehicle's brakes for 1.5 seconds once you lift your foot off the brake when you're on an incline that’s 5 percent or steeper. … During our testing on a 7.2 percent grade on July 13, the hill-hold system didn’t engage. The truck rolled backward as soon as we lifted our foot off the brake pedal.” The issue was initially discovered in a Chevrolet Silverado 2500.
Thankfully, GM acted quickly. Autoblog reports: “GM engineers investigated the issue with engineers from system supplier TRW and found an incorrect calibration value in the control software for the accelerometer used to detect inclines. This prevented the system from correctly detecting the smaller hill.”
GM began implementing the fix on Monday -- so any new heavy-duty trucks produced will be calibrated for optimal performance.
“A GM engineer we spoke with said fixing an issue like this a few years ago could have taken weeks or months,” writes Cars.com. “Now, it’s being fixed in days.”
No word yet on how GM plans on recalibrating models already sold.
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