GM Recalls Could Last Well Into The Summer

With the latest round of recalls announced yesterday, General Motors recalled 15.8 million cars in North America in 2014, more cars than they sold in the last five years combined. And they may not be stopping anytime soon.

According to analysts at Barclays who have spoken to GM executives, the recalls could last into mid-summer, The Detroit Free Press reports. They're also trying to recall vehicles faster, as soon as they know about the problems, rather than later. From the newspaper:

"GM is trying to aggressively issue recalls for items as soon as they learn about it, rather than batching the items for a vehicle and waiting," Barclays' Johnson said. "This will increase the frequency of recalls, but will reduce the total number of vehicles recalled."

Remember, the problem isn't really that GM is recalling these cars, it's that they knew about the ignition switch defect for more than a decade and did nothing. Thankfully, they seem to taking a different tack this time around, which is better for consumers in the long run.

As GM tweaks the way it handles defects and communicates with both customers and federal safety regulators, it puts product chief Mark Reuss in charge of recalls. Reuss will be on a team of five who will make decisions on recalls going forward.

More recalls may be coming, but it's better than having defective cars on the road. Now the question will be how quickly they can get all of these cars fixed.

Photo credit AP