The companies include: Volkswagen, Tesla, Daimler’s Mercedes Benz division, Jaguar-Land Rover, Suzuki, Volvo Trucks, and Spartan Motors. Depending on the regulator’s findings, the manufacturers could add to the 11 companies and over 19.2 million vehicles within the U.S. implicated in the recall. Specifically, the NHTSA is asking the automakers whether or not their airbags contain ammonium nitrate, the propellant that can “potentially lead to overaggressive combustion or potentially cause the inflator to rupture,” spraying shrapnel into the driver’s cabin; which has been attributed to at least eight deaths and over 100 injuries.
The Associated Press is reporting that the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) has sent letters to seven additional automakers requesting information about the types of inflators they use in their airbags related to the Takata recall. The companies include: Volkswagen, Tesla, Daimler’s Mercedes Benz division, Jaguar-Land Rover, Suzuki, Volvo Trucks, and Spartan Motors. Depending on the regulator’s findings, the manufacturers could add to the 11 companies and over 19.2 million vehicles within the U.S. implicated in the recall. Specifically, the NHTSA is asking the automakers whether or not their airbags contain ammonium nitrate, the propellant that can “potentially lead to overaggressive combustion or potentially cause the inflator to rupture,” spraying shrapnel into the driver’s cabin; which has been attributed to at least eight deaths and over 100 injuries. Regulators, automakers, and Takata have spent much of the year investigating the root cause of the aggressive deployment, with consensus opinion believing that the chemical corrodes over time due to excessive exposure to moisture and humidity. The Takata recall is widely considered to be the largest in automotive history.
For Volkswagen the letter is a minor distraction compared to the massive emissions cheating scandal that was uncovered by researchers and California regulators earlier in the month. The company however has already been working with the NHTSA in the investigation of a June crash of a 2015 Volkswagen Tiguan in Missouri involving a ruptured Takata inflator, which did not match the previous pattern of the defect occurring in high-humidity areas. Volkswagen also issued a recall last month involving another non-Takata airbag component, the clock spring, for over 420,000 vehicles as well. Mercedes representatives told the Associated Press that the company does use Takata airbags, but not the ones involved in the recall, although the company is complying with the NHTSA’s request for information. The other automakers declined to comment on the issue as of the time of this writing. The letters come as NHTSA administrator Michael Rosekind has scheduled a public hearing on October 22nd in order to exchange information and to help coordinate recall efforts.
The letters will likely lead to even more problems for the embattled Japanese airbag manufacturer. Over the past year, Takata has shown a great degree of reluctance in addressing the widespread defects, especially in its defense of ammonium nitrate. Despite agreeing to a consent order with the NHTSA in May, compelling the company to comply with the regulator’s recall efforts, the company originally insisted on continuing the use of the chemical before agreeing to decrease its use over the coming years largely due to Congressional pressure. The company’s North American vice president Kevin Kennedy told a House of Representatives committee earlier this summer that, “We also have alternate propellants now with guanidine nitrate. We started production a year or two ago and we’re continuing to ramp those up. I think overall you will see our production of ammonium nitrate go down rapidly.” Takata is the only major airbag manufacturer to use ammonium nitrate as its propellant.
Sources:
Consumerist – Ashlee Kieler
MLive – David Muller
The Detroit News – David Shepardson
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