GM vehicles under federal scrutiny after hundreds of reports

The eBoost brake-by-wire system is responsible for at least 22 crashes now.

The short version

• The federal government is expanding a safety investigation into a number of vehicles manufactured by General Motors after receiving hundreds of reports of brake failure.
• The problem affects more than 1.1 million cars, including many of GM’s electric vehicles, as well as ones it has built for Honda and Acura.
• The problem is with the brake-by-wire system (which GM calls eBoost ), which can suffer a spindle fracture while driving.

What happened

GM says that in the event of that happening, the car should still retain a number of critical safety features—antilock brakes, traction control, and stability control—at least until it comes to a complete stop, at which point they become inoperable. But NHTSA’s ODI says that it has received many reports that contradict this behavior and allege that eBoost failures are followed by an immediate loss of braking, which obviously poses a safety risk.

Why it matters

Indeed, NHTSA has received 227 incident reports, a number that grows to 745 once you include the hundreds of occurrences reported to GM.

Summary by Nerd News Network. Read the full article at Ars Technica via the links above and below.