2012 Service airbag alert?

3893 Views 5 Replies 4 Participants Last post by world2steven, Jul 18, 2019

world2steven

Discussion Starter · Nov 6, 2018

Service airbag alert

I’ve been getting intermittent “Service airbag” alerts on my 2013 Volt. I get a console message as well as the red error light to the left of the console. The third time in the shop the mechanic diagnosed it as a faulty sensor. The mechanics have been able to make the alert go away for 2 – 3 months at a time. (The fault in the sensor seems to be related to temperature. The alert hasn’t appeared since the arrival of cooler weather here in Tucson.)

I’ve been told that when the red light is on the air bag will NOT deploy – also (I believe?) that the alert was for the driver not the passenger side airbag. It will apparently cost around $200 to replace the faulty sensor if I don’t want to experience any more intermittent problems.

Questions:
1. even though the car is well out of warranty, is this a warranty / safety issue GM should fix?
2. since it is intermittent how important is it to get repaired, both for my sake and any passengers?
3. Anyone else had this problem?

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Aseras

· #3 · Nov 7, 2018

I get it all the time. The problem is the passenger presence detection system GM decided to use. It was apparently designed to be the only technological thing in existence in a modern electric car..... it uses a capacitive field and the logic is typical GM pants on head stupid.

Basically anything that has an electric field will set it off and eventually it'll give up and throw the error.

There's a special coverage campaign to replace the seat cushion with the sensor relocated from the top to the bottom of the foam. If you know to ask for it AND your dealer feels like playing ball.
The good news is if there service airbag warning light fires, it stores a permanent DTC and you can use that as leverage.

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