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.
Read Article