Honda to recall 63,200 vehicles over faulty Takata airbags

After a long wait and constant investigations, Japanese auto major Honda has finally decided to recall another lot of vehicles in order to replace the faulty Takata airbags. Honda Motor is going to recall around 63,200 vehicles for a defect in driver’s side airbag that was manufactured by Takata Corp. The same Japanese supplier’s faulty airbags had been arousing a series of latest recalls that also involved the other Japanese car majors, Toyota and Nissan. This faulty Takata airbags issue has affected about 16 million vehicles till date.

Honda Motor is currently going to recall only certain years’ manufactured CR-V, Civic, Amaze and Brio models. These recalled vehicles belong to the batches that were manufactured in the years between 2012 and 2015. Moreover, these vehicles which are involved in the current recall by the company have been mostly manufactured in China and other Asian countries, Honda said on a company statement.

However, a Honda spokesman, Teruhiko Tatebe also revealed that the company is also going to recall vehicles from a number of countries in Europe, Africa and Latin America. He also added by saying that this recall does not involve any of the vehicles that have been sold in North America.

In the affected Honda vehicles, the driver’s side airbag may contain a faulty inflator that was manufactured with an incorrect component, further said the Honda spokesman.

The Honda company statement also explained that the presence of this faulty inflator could result in the air bag to deploy unnecessarily, and the inflator may also explode with too much force. In addition, the inflator could also shoot out metal fragments inside the cabin of the vehicle causing injuries to the driver as well as the other occupants of the car.

Tatebe added that till now, Honda Motor has received no reports of accidents or injuries as a result of this faulty air bag issue, and the company is carrying out this recall as a precautionary preventive measure.

This air bag issue has affected many non-Japanese car majors as well, and it came into Honda Motor’s notice when General Motors recalled about 33,000 Chevrolet Cruze models in the car market of North America in June this year.

Since back in November 2008, many car makers including Toyota, Honda and BMW have recalled about 12.3 million vehicles across the globe because of the faulty air bags supplied by Takata. These recalls involved faulty air bags in both the driver and passenger sides, in which the inflators could explode causing injuries to the occupants of the vehicles.

In most of the earlier vehicle recalls involving the Takata airbags, it was found that there are faults in the propellants that burn and produces gas to fill up the air bag when the air bag needs to deploy. Some of these defective propellants were found to be manufactured with very little force, while the others were exposed to a lot of moisture prior to their placing inside the inflators.