Takata may be forced to recall every airbag manufactured with ammonium nitrate propellant if the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration turns a Congressional request into a formal order.
A letter from Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.) urges Takata to recall all of its airbags using the questionable propellant after a side airbag produced by the Japanese supplier ruptured on a 2015 Volkswagen Tiguan in June and was reported earlier this week. Until now, the Takata recalls—spanning back to 2008 when they first surfaced on Honda vehicles and now affecting 18.6 million cars in the U.S.—have only encompassed driver and passenger frontal airbags that can shoot shrapnel through the bags when they deploy. Volkswagen is currently under a special order from NHTSA to provide additional details about the defect.
“In light of the most recent incident, which did not occur in one of the regions originally designated as ‘high humidity,’ and which involved a 2015 vehicle not currently subject to recall, we urge you to voluntarily recall all vehicles containing Takata airbags,” the senators wrote.
If NHTSA issues another special order against Takata or a recall request, millions of additional cars could be involved and millions more that have already been repaired might need to be fixed a second time. In addition, late-model vehicles with Takata’s newest airbag inflators—including those on the assembly line right now—could be affected if Takata complies with the letter and releases its complete testing data. The company has until September 3rd to respond, although the the company is not legally bound to answer.
“This directly undercuts Takata’s continued insistence—despite growing evidence to the contrary—that the flaws in its airbag inflators are limited to prior designs in older model cars and only present when the airbags have prolonged exposure to extremely humid conditions,” the letter said.
Blumenthal and Markey, both of whom have led hearings with Takata and General Motors on the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation and authored several recall-related bills, want Takata to create a compensation fund similar to the $625 million that GM has allocated to settle with nearly 400 victims of its ignition switch defect. At least eight people have died and 139 people have been injured from the defective airbags.
During a House committee hearing in June, Takata executive vice president Kevin Kennedy—to whom the letter was addressed—said the company was the only airbag supplier that used ammonium nitrate as a “main propellant” and that it would “rapidly” switch to another propellant due to its “bad reputation.” Former Takata employees have claimed as far back as 1999 that ammonium nitrate was unsafe and prone to “catastrophic failures.” That’s when the supplier began switching from Tetrazole, a more expensive synthetic compound used in many of Takata’s current inflators, to ammonium nitrate, a natural compound that was more volatile but was one-tenth the price.
In 2008, after Honda began its first round of Takata airbag recalls, the company changed the compound again reportedly to address moisture-related degradation of the propellant. In his testimony, Kennedy denied Takata switched to ammonium nitrate to cut costs and said that “properly designed and manufactured phase-stabilized ammonium nitrate can be done properly.” The company continues to manufacture airbags with the propellant.
While Takata still has not identified a root cause and continues to test parts, moisture intrusion has been a major concern within the affected inflators. Blumenthal and Markey want Takata to disclose the moisture level it considers acceptable during manufacturing and that it should “disclose publicly all relevant test results for its new and previous inflator designs, fully, completely, and without delay.”
Many of the replacement Takata airbags using the same propellant could become just as defective and susceptible to humidity over seven-and-a-half to 12 years, although the company is not sure why certain inflators on the same assembly line have burst and others do not. Neither Takata nor NHTSA has issued any statement regarding the senators’ recall request.
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