Honda will replace the rear windows of many 2022-2023 HR-V subcompact SUVs under a safety campaign that falls short of a formal recall.
The news comes from Consumer Reports, which saw the rear window of a test vehicle shatter in the recent nationwide cold snap.
Cold Weather Revealed the Problem
A car is an incredibly complex device. Automakers, government agencies, and review sites like ours put them through thousands of hours of testing. That diligence helps identify many problems with a new design.
But sometimes, faults don’t become apparent until thousands of customers have taken possession of the cars and put them through unique circumstances that didn’t come up during testing.
That’s happening with the current HR-V, which Honda redesigned for the 2023 model year. As temperatures plunged nationwide this month, some owners have turned on the rear defroster and watched their back windows shatter.
A National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) database of complaints cites 243 such claims, most relatively recent.
Consumer Reports (CR) experienced it firsthand. “The rear windshield shattered on CR’s own 2023 HR-V last week as one of our testers warmed up the car using remote start on a cold New England morning,” CR explains. The incident caused no injuries, but the tester was left cleaning up glass shards, “and the contents of the cargo area were no longer secure.”
Uneven Heating at Fault
Honda tells CR that a manufacturing defect creates a “hot spot” in the rear glass that expands at a different rate than the rest of the window, which can lead to the sudden burst.
The company will still launch a “voluntary product update campaign” to replace broken rear windows. It’s not a formal recall where the automaker works with the NHTSA to correct a manufacturing problem nationwide.
Owners should contact a local Honda dealer or call Honda customer service at 1(800) 999-1009, CR says, to arrange the repair.
Given the number of complaints filed with the agency, we wouldn’t be surprised to see the NHTSA force Honda to perform a formal recall and replace all HR-V rear windows, even those that haven’t shattered.
So far, the automaker is limiting its repair campaign to a less formal arrangement that sees it only repairing shattered windows.
Many cars face recalls at some point in their lives. Automakers try to contact every owner to let them know they must bring their vehicle in for repairs. But they aren’t always successful in finding everyone. Using our recall center, you can see whether your car has any unaddressed recall issues.
