Industry News: Takata Acknowledges Airbag Defect, Affects Nearly 34 Million Vehicles

[William Maley]

After months of pressure from the U.S. Government and a number of recalls from automakers, Japanese supplier Takata agreed to declare that its airbag inflators in nearly 34 million vehicles are defective. The announcement was made today by U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx at a press conference.

 

“Up until now Takata has refused to acknowledge that their airbags are defective, That changes today,” said Foxx.

 

The problem with Takata's airbags deals with propellant exploding with too much force and sends dangerous metal fragments flying. This problem has been linked to 6 deaths and more than 100 injuries. Scarily, the root cause of the problem hasn't been found at this time - though officials link the problem to high humidity and moisture exposure.

 

The Detroit News reports that Takata will announce that it has filed 4 defect reports with U.S. auto safety officials stating that 33.8 million vehicles have defective driver and passenger air bag inflators. This is double the amount vehicles already recalled by automakers since 2013. It could mean that this air bag problem could mark the largest U.S. recall of any consumer product, since the Tylenol poison scare in 1982.

 

Source: Automotive News (Subscription Required), The Detroit News

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[G. David Felt]

So Takata is forced to finally acknowledge their products sucks but what are they going to do to insure all 34 million plus the million more it has not acknowledged yet are going to get fixed? Seems to me a ban on all auto's with Takata airbags is needed even in being able to resell the auto's on the used market. This would make the OEM's wake up and address this as I doubt the industry wants to have 34 million auto's unable to be sold or resold.

 

Time to enforce safety by denying any Takata airbag equipped auto from being eligible for sale in the US.

[Drew Dowdell]

Honda has twice notified us of the need to replace the airbag inflator in our CR-V, but they never seem to have the part in stock.  I'll probably sell the vehicle before it ever gets replaced.

[G. David Felt]

That shows the lack of commitment from both Honda and Takata to address this in a timely manner.

[G. David Felt]

OUCH, Now it seems VW and Tesla are affected with the airbag issue also.

 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-28/u-s-regulator-considers-order-to-expand-takata-air-bag-recalls

 

This is going to kill the Takata company I think.