Honda Motor Co., Ltd. (HMC) announced that it is expanding its recall related to the faulty air bags supplied by Takata Corp by another 170,000 vehicles worldwide. Takata is one of the leading global suppliers of automotive safety systems and products. Honda announced the recall soon after the report of a fatal accident of a driver in Malaysia who was driving the 2003 Honda City model.
Honda is recalling five models including the Fit and Civic. Notably, none of the vehicles from North America have been recalled. To date, faulty air bags have led to four deaths in the U.S. All these fatal accidents were related to Honda vehicles. This recall by Honda, which is the largest customer of Takata, will further strengthen the crisis.
In Aug 2014, Honda announced a global recall of 63,200 vehicles with faulty Takata-made driver-side air bags. The vehicles recalled include CR-V, Civic, Brio and Amaze of model years 2012–2015.
Honda said that the driver-side air bags manufactured by Takata had an inflator that was produced with a faulty part. Thus, when the air bag is deployed, the inflator can explode and shoot out metal fragments into the vehicle.
In June this year, Honda also recalled 2.03 million vehicles globally due to malfunctioning Takata-made airbag inflators. Also, in the same month, other automakers like Toyota Motor Corp. (TM), Mazda Motor Corp. (MZDAY) and Nissan Motor Co. Ltd. (NSANY) announced recalls owing to defective Takata airbag inflators. All these automakers, along with BMW, had recalled 3.6 million vehicles with defective Takata airbags last year as well.
Since 2008, auto manufacturers have recalled a total of 17 million vehicles globally due to faulty driver-side and passenger-side air bags produced by Takata.
Currently, Honda carries a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell).
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