Honda Ponders The Reality That Millions Of Replaced Airbags Will Need To Be Replaced...Again

Now that Honda Motor Co. has recalled 14.3 million vehicles to fix defective Takata airbag inflators, outgoing CEO Takanobu Ito says he is prepared for a difficult possibility: If the replacements also go bad someday, they would need to be replaced too.

Supplier Takata Corp. is producing 450,000 replacement inflators per month, but the company has not yet identified the root defects that cause some inflators to explode and spew metal fragments into the cabin.

Honda and other automakers are using the replacements anyway, on the premise that the new inflators -- which don't seem to malfunction -- are safer than the old inflators.

TheSteve - 2/24/2015 11:34:12 AM

+1 Boost

I admit I'm not a high-rollin' car exec or a parts manufacturer, but if:

(1) An airbag has a tendency to unduly injure the user when used exactly as directed, and

(2) The cause of the defect has not been identified, and

(3) The suspect airbags are replaced by the same manufacturer, with the same model as the one with the known defect

...then aren't we just making an inconsequential change and hoping that the problem will magically go away?

Vette71 - 2/24/2015 4:42:32 PM

+1 Boost

Yep. Sadly our naive uneducated public, press and government officials expect instant action on a problem as tough or even tougher then figuring out what caused a plane to crash. The NTSB takes months and sometimes a couple of years to figure that out. Meanwhile we keep flying. With 5 USA deaths out of millions of USA auto installations the odds of one being a victim are pretty low. Better to figure out the root cause, design and test a new solution and then do a recall.