General Motors is struggling to gather enough replacement ignition switches for the small car recall connected with 13 deaths and has repaired only 2 percent of the nearly 2.6 million vehicles included in the recall.
Starting repairs about six weeks ago, the automaker said that 47,000 cars have been fixed so far, but the company has had difficulty getting enough replacement switches from its supplier, CNNMoney reported.
Delphi Automotive, which was the only supplier for the part when the small cars were being built, has ramped up ignition switch production with additional shifts and plans an extra production line soon.
Enough parts for all 2.6 million recalled small cars, including the Chevrolet Cobalt and Saturn Ion, should be available for consumers by October.
"With the second line coming online, we expect a much greater availability of parts," said GM spokesman Greg Martin, as quoted by CNNMoney. "By mid-July we expect supplies of parts to meet demand."
The faulty ignition switches can turn off the vehicle while it is moving and disable the car's airbags, a tragic flaw that has now been linked to 47 crashes, Bloomberg reported. GM is aware of 13 deaths connected with the issue and hasn't discovered any more fatalities in its investigation, the automaker said last week.
"We have done a thorough analysis of all the information available to us and at this time, based on everything we know, there have been 13 fatalities associated with the ignition switch," Jim Cain, a company spokesman, told Bloomberg.
According to company data, 80 percent of recalled GM vehicles are repaired within a year, while 85 percent are repaired within two years, which GM says is the highest repair rate in the auto industry.
In the wake of the ignition switch recall and a federal investigation, GM has been issuing a plethora of recalls for unrelated issues in other models, this year recalling around 15 million vehicles in all.
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