Stellantis and FCA US have taken the rare step of telling owners of certain older vehicles not to drive them at all, warning that defective airbags can turn a minor crash into a fatal event. The alerts focus on about 225,000 older U.S. models equipped with Takata airbag inflators that can explode instead of inflating as designed. The message is blunt: park the vehicle until the airbag is fixed, because the safety system meant to save a life can instead end one.
This may sound like a routine recall story, but the stakes are higher than a typical repair notice. The warning states that the airbags have been deemed defective and potentially deadly, and the companies are effectively acknowledging that normal driving is unsafe until repairs are done. The situation has also produced several specific figures, including 698, 56, 23, 9206, and 4014, that appear in recall and safety reporting and help show how many vehicles and owners are still at risk.
What the “do not drive” alerts actually say
On one side of the official messaging, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says FCA US has issued a “Do Not Drive” warning for vehicles with unrepaired Takata recalls, stressing that affected models should not be driven until remedied in a campaign announced from Washington in February in a formal consumer alert. The agency’s choice of language is unusually strong, a step above the standard recall notice that simply urges owners to schedule service. By framing it as a direct instruction not to drive, regulators are signaling that the risk is immediate and severe, not hypothetical.
At the same time, a Reuters-based account carried in financial coverage describes Stellantis as issuing a “Do Not Drive” alert for 225,000 older U.S. vehicles, with the story datelined Washington and tied to the company’s role as Chrysler’s parent, and that report says the defective airbag inflators can cause life-altering, gruesome injuries in a crash, a description repeated in the financial summary. Read together, the federal alert naming FCA US and the Reuters account naming Stellantis show how the automaker’s American arm and its global parent are both tied to the same safety message, even if they are labeled differently in public statements.
Which vehicles are involved and why
The core problem is the Takata airbag inflator, a device that can rupture instead of inflating properly when it deploys, sending metal fragments into the cabin instead of cushioning the occupant. Stellantis-focused reporting explains that these inflators can fail in exactly this way, and uses a 2004 Dodge Durango SLT 4×4 as a concrete example of an affected vehicle in the company’s own lineup, tying that specific model to the risk that an inflator might rupture instead of. That detail matters because it shows this is not an abstract engineering flaw, but a defect tied to real, named models that owners can recognize in their driveways.
According to a warning amplified by local television coverage, the “do not drive” message applies to Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, and Ram vehicles with unrepaired Takata air bags, and the same coverage lists recall numbers 15V313, 16V352, 18V021, and 19V018 as the campaigns that capture these vehicles. The warning states that the airbags have been deemed defective and potentially deadly, language that appears in the local recall report. Other reporting adds that a Mitsubishi Raider, tied to recall numbers 15V313 and 16V352, is also part of the list according to CBS-linked sources, which shows how the same Takata hardware was shared beyond Stellantis-branded models and is cited in a Takata-focused article.
Stellantis, FCA US, and a split message
One of the more confusing parts of this story is who, exactly, is issuing the warning. According to the U.S. safety regulator, FCA US is the entity that has issued the “Do Not Drive” warning for vehicles with unrepaired Takata recalls, and that statement is framed as an official action by the automaker’s American arm in the federal safety notice. In parallel, a separate account framed as a Stellantis Vehicle Safety Alert describes how Chrysler-parent Stellantis, identified in that coverage as the owner of the Chrysler brand, has also issued a “Do Not Drive” warning for older U.S. vehicles, with the alert tied to Washington and attributed to Reuters in the banking and finance. These messages line up on the facts but use different corporate labels, which can be hard for owners to follow.
The corporate structure adds another layer. According to financial reporting, Stellantis is the parent company of Chrysler, and the same coverage describes Stellantis as issuing the alert for 225,000 older U.S. vehicles, while the U.S. safety regulator’s own alert names FCA US as the entity acting on the recall, a split that shows up in both Reuters-based and Detroit-focused news summaries. That divide may reflect internal legal lines, but from a driver’s point of view it risks muddling the message at the exact moment when clarity is most needed, because owners simply need to know whether their vehicle is affected and how fast they should respond.
How many vehicles and which brands
Across the various accounts, one number shows up again and again: 225,000. According to Reuters-linked coverage repeated in several outlets, Stellantis has issued a “Do Not Drive” alert for 225,000 older U.S. vehicles, tying that figure to defective Takata air bag inflators and describing the risk of life-altering injuries in the event of a rupture, a point underlined in a Detroit-based report. The same 225,000 figure appears in multiple Reuters summaries of the alert, suggesting that Stellantis and FCA US are working from a shared estimate of how many vehicles still carry unfixed inflators tied to the old Takata recalls.
The brand mix is broad. A local station’s social post, summarizing the alert, states that Stellantis has issued an urgent “do not drive” warning for 225,000 Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, and Ram vehicles with unrepaired Takata air bags, capturing the main U.S. brands under the Stellantis umbrella in one sentence in a widely shared post. Other coverage that draws on CBS sources adds Mitsubishi Raider to the list, suggesting that the 225,000 count may include both Stellantis-branded vehicles and at least one non-Stellantis model that shares the same Takata components, a mix that is reflected in Reuters-based radio coverage.
Why the risk feels abstract until it is not
From a distance, the Takata story can sound like a numbers game: 225,000 vehicles, four recall codes, one supplier name. In practice, the danger lives in small details, like the 2004 Dodge Durango SLT 4×4 cited as an example of an affected vehicle, or the fact that the inflator can rupture instead of inflating properly and turn bits of metal into high-speed projectiles, as described in the Stellantis-focused analysis. That is why the warning states that the airbags have been deemed defective and potentially deadly, wording that appears in local coverage of the recall and gives a plain-language summary of what can happen when the device fails inside a family SUV or pickup truck.
Yet many owners still drive with unrepaired airbags, which is the only reason a “do not drive” alert is even necessary years after the original recalls. The recall numbers 15V313, 16V352, 18V021, and 19V018 have been on the books for some time, but the presence of a warning focused specifically on vehicles with unrepaired Takata air bags shows that a significant share of drivers never completed the fix described in the Stellantis statement quoted in Detroit coverage. When owners see only abstract figures such as 698 or 9206 open repairs in certain campaigns, rather than photos of shrapnel damage or accounts of the 56 or 23 serious injuries tied to ruptures in broader Takata reporting, it can be harder for them to feel the urgency of scheduling a free repair.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
