Hyundai is recalling 2,242 Palisades. A child died in one.

Hyundai Australia has issued a recall on 2,242 Palisades built between 2025 and 2026 because the powered fold-flat third row can stow itself with someone still in it. The fix is a software update. The reason is the death of a two year old child in Ohio in March, who was killed by the same seat feature in a US-market Palisade.

There is no soft way to write that sentence. So we are not going to try.

What the seats actually do

The 2026 Palisade has a one-touch fold function for the second and third rows. The idea is that you can drop the seats from a screen in the boot, or from the infotainment screen up front, and the seats stow themselves so you can load whatever you need to load. The problem is that the occupant detection system on the affected vehicles can fail to register a child, a pet, or any small unaware passenger sitting in those seats when the function is triggered. The motor keeps going. The seat folds anyway.

What the software update changes

The over-the-air update, available immediately for any Palisade registered with Hyundai's Bluelink connected service, does three things. It requires the tailgate to be open before the stow function will run. It removes the ability to fold the seats from the infotainment screen up front. And it forces the user to press and hold the physical switches in the cargo area, rather than tap and walk away.

If the car is not on Bluelink, owners need to book a dealer appointment for the update to be applied directly. Owners can confirm whether their VIN is affected through the Vehicle Recalls website or by calling Hyundai Customer Care on 1800 186 306.

Cartell Assessment

A child died because a feature did exactly what it was designed to do, with the part of the design that was meant to stop it not working as expected. Hyundai's response so far has been measured and reasonable. The OTA fix is genuinely well thought through, the requirement that the tailgate be open before the seats can stow is the kind of physical constraint that should have been in the original specification, and the company halted Palisade Calligraphy deliveries in Australia in March before being legally required to. That is the right behaviour, and it deserves to be recorded as such.

The harder question is why one-touch automated stow was a marketed feature on a family SUV in the first place. There is a long history of cars adding cabin automation because the engineering shows well in a launch video, not because the use case justifies the risk. A button that requires you to hold it down is not a worse product. It is the product that should have shipped.

AU Outlook

If you own a 2025 or 2026 Palisade, check your VIN at vehiclerecalls.gov.au today. If you have Bluelink active, the OTA should land in days, not weeks. If you do not, book the dealer. The interim mitigation is the obvious one. Until the update is applied, do not put a child, a pet, or anything that cannot get itself out of a seat into the second or third row, and do not let a kid play with the fold-flat buttons in the boot.