The World’s leading French Automotive brand Renault hit a speed breaker on the 10-Oct when the whole country was celebrating Dussehra – a festival that celebrates the victory of good over evil or one that Renault would have celebrated for over hauling the small passenger vehicle market.
All was not well when Renault issued its first recall of select KWID 0.8 L variants that were produced up to 18th May 2016 (as of May, 2016 the company has sold 56,250 units) of KWID including in global markets such as East Africa, France, Iran, Japan, Kenya, Mauritius, Mozambique, Sri Lanka, Tanzania among others.
The company in a press issue said:
In line with our high standards of product quality, Renault India is conducting a pre-emptive and voluntary inspection of select 0.8 L variants of Renault KWID that were produced up to 18th May 2016.
As a proactive measure, a fuel hose clip will be added to these select cars along with the evaluation of overall functionality of the fuel system to mitigate any potential disruption of fuel supply. We will inspect these cars without any cost to the customers and carry out necessary measures, if required.
We are in the process of contacting customers, requesting them to come to dealerships to get their cars inspected.
Related Post: Renault KWID Close To Achieving 1 Lakh Unit Sales, Lowest Priced In Maruti Suzuki’s Backyard
The issue as mentioned in their press release relates to a faulty fuel system, hose clip. As we understand the fuel line is a hose that is used to bring fuel from one point in a vehicle to another or from a storage tank to a vehicle.
While this maybe Renault’s first global major quality issue, this might bring into question the quality of its suppliers – a feat that Renault has boasted of achieving 90% localisation of parts. The same suppliers also provide materials to its partnered company Nissan in India.
The company failed to mention whether the recall is local or a global one in which case the company should be ready for a major blow from not just Indian regulators but also the European ones. But on the fair side, Renault is not the first company with such issues. Most of its arch rival including Maruti Suzuki has had such issues in the past. However considering the lower units of around 56,250 of the over 2,164,070 passenger and commercial vehicles sold in India since April, this recall should be a small bump.
Oh wait.. Remember that most of the customers are already part of a large number of users using the Renault app. So while the onus of contacting the customer’s rest with the dealers, this should be a quick cost effective exercise for Renault.
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