2017 Infiniti Q50

The passenger seat occupant sensor is on. Dealer confirmed the code is related to a bad sensor so even if someone is sitting in the passenger seat and we are in an accident the airbag will not deploy. The dealer said a recall exists for earlier models but not for the 2017 even though they say it’s the same components. They want to charge me between $6,000 to $8,000 to repair which is almost as much as the car is worth. This unfortunately is cost prohibitive at this time so we are driving with the known risk. The light has been on for a couple of years now as we were hoping an additional recall would come out but it hasn’t which is why I am submitting this report.

I had a passenger seat belt light on and took it to Jim Coleman Infiniti in Bethesda,MD. They then were going to charge me a diagnostic fee to fix it, but instead proceeded to perform a zero point seat reset and got the error code B00A0 and then the passenger air bag light came on. They subsequently said that the vehicle was not covered under any recall or warranty and said that the seat needed to be replaced and informed me that it would be around $8000 at that time. Now it must be more. Looking at the recall campaign 16V244000 my vehicle does not qualify since it is one model year later, but I have seen others have the same issue that I have with the 2017 Q50. There is infact one in Florida that has a similar experience as mine. Talking to the dealer and Infiniti neither wanted to do a goodwill jesters and would only reduce the cost by a few thousand dollars. That still meant that I would need to put out more than $4000 to get a safety issue that should be covered. The symptoms and error codes are exactly the same. So I ask that you extend the recall campaign to the 2017 model year as well for the Q50. It is a safety hazard that will be present on the streets. The dealer also refuses to do the module reset saying that it will fail again. Pleas ask Infiniti to cover the cost of ensuring this critical safety for the passenger side is resolved for all model years that have the error code from the recall.

My airbags are currently disabled due to a faulty occupant detection system. I see that this was an Infiniti recall on many2017 Q50s, but my car is not included in the recall. The dealership confirms that my car is not part of the recall. The specific part involved in the recall is the front passenger Occupant Classification System (OCS), which triggers the error code being produced by my car.

I took the car into the dealership to diagnose the reason that I was getting a Seat Belt light and they said that the guide suggested to do a zero point reset on the seat. When they attempted this they said that it failed and now the system has an airbag light on. There is no more seat belt light on now for the passanger side, but there is a hard error code for the airbag system on the passenger side. The Dealership now says the cost to repair is over $8500 when the car is only valued at $10000. I saw that there was a voluntary recall on a 2016 edition and it said that if the zero point reset should fail then the OCS module needs to be replaced, but now they are saying tha the OCS module and Seat need to be replaced. This looks to be like an issue with the model itself. The reason this is a safety issue, is that now the airbags will not work on the passenger side. This is caused by the zero point procedure that Infiniti has instructed their techs to do. I believe they are causing issues and had this not been needed then I would not have had an airbag issue. If there was an airbag issue before this procedure then the symbol was not correct and was false. It was a safety issue since the Passenger side airbag will not deploy in this case.

The contact owns a 2017 Infiniti Q50. The contact stated while driving at an undisclosed speed, the passenger’s side seat belt warning light illuminated. The contact stated that there was no passenger located in the front passenger’s seat during the failure. The vehicle was taken to the dealer where it was diagnosed that the OCS sensor had failed, and the contact was informed that the front passenger's side air bag and the front passenger’s seat needed to be replaced. The vehicle was not repaired. The manufacturer was made aware of the failure. The failure mileage was approximately 86,000.