A Senate report released today on the ongoing Takata airbag debacle reveals that four automakers are still selling (or, inexplicably, plan to sell) vehicles equipped with airbags that are certainly defective.
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Four automakers confirmed in an investigation from the Senate Commerce Committee Democrats that they are continuing to sell new vehicles with Takata ammonium-nitrate inflators that lack a chemical drying agent.
Automakers admitted to USA lawmakers this week that they are still putting possibly defective Takata airbags in their new cars even while they are recalling close to 70 million old ones.
The new recalls are the result of increasingly aggressive United States auto safety regulators. Honda expects the recalls to start in late summer for automobiles and in late fall for the motorcycles.
The report underscores the convoluted way in which the mass recalls of Takata air bags have unfolded, with new models still being fitted with defective air bags and, in some cases, recalled cars also receiving defective air bags. NHTSA has called the Takata inflators a “ticking time bomb”. On May 4, 2016, the NHTSA announced it was expanding the Takata airbag inflator recall. Fiat Chrysler said at least one of its current models contained a passenger-side airbag with the faulty inflator.
The report also found that more than 2.1-million defective inflators have been installed as replacements in vehicles already recalled.
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FCA US is voluntarily recalling about 4.3 million older-model vehicles to replace their front-passenger air bag inflators. Fiat Chrysler and Toyota did not provide the models of the new cars produced with the problematic inflators (although Toyota estimated it will produce about 175,000 vehicles that fall into this category). It may take several weeks for all the newly recalled vehicles to be entered into the database. It’s still legal, since the recall isn’t complete yet, but Nelson says it “troubling” that people are unwittingly buying new cars outfitted with risky equipment that they’ll soon have to replace. Propellant in the inflaters could degrade over time if exposed to high humidity and temperature changes, making it prone to “overaggressive combustion”.
