Investigators at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration may decide that automakers must recall an additional 70 million to 90 million airbags made by beleaguered automotive supplier Takata, according to media reports.
Advertisement
The move could cost the company billions of dollars and slow down the already arduous replacement process.
“Takata is deeply sorry for all fatalities and injuries that have occurred in any case where a Takata airbag inflator has failed to deploy as intended”, the company said again on Tuesday.
In response, Takata said the findings were “consistent” with its own testing that found heat and moisture were “significant factors in the small number of inflators that have malfunctioned”.
“Orbital ATK’s root cause analysis is backed by 20,000 hours of testing and analysis by experienced engineers, scientists, and technicians”, Bob Wardle, senior director of Technology Programs for Orbital ATK’s Propulsion Systems Division, said in a statement.
“I do not understand why we are failing every lot”, he wrote.
“We have been staying closely in touch with our main banks and automaker customers, and we believe we have the financial framework in place to manage Takata through the situation”, he wrote.
Takata declined to comment to Reuters when asked about the possibility of massive additional recalls and whether another 70m to 90m inflators still in vehicles could endanger drivers. More recalls would add more delays.
The Virginia rocket science company Orbital ATK has determined that a number of factors must act in combination to cause the explosion, including but not limited to the presence of moisture that degrades the ammonium nitrate, according to the person, who was not authorized to reveal the findings and didn’t want to be identified. At least 5 million inflators have the drying agent, but no ruptures have been reported in vehicles with the dessicant.
“In a meeting with Committee staff, Takata representatives stated that the most serious data manipulation occurred in 2000; however, emails and documents reviewed by Committee minority staff demonstrate that these data integrity issues continued even in the years after the airbag recalls began, when fatalities had been linked to rupturing airbags”, the report continued. In a story covered last week by Reuters, the company was said to be considering selling some of its non-core businesses worldwide. The most recent death report came on December 22, when Joel Knight, 52, drove his 2006 Ford Ranger pickup into a cow on a rural road near his home in Kershaw, South Carolina.
Advertisement
“He died after metal fragments from the driver’s inflator impaled his neck”, the AP reported.
