Honda Motor Company expanded the Takata airbag recall today by adding well over a quarter million vehicles in the Japanese domestic market. This move is in response to the United States recall expansion ordered last week by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Honda has seen the largest impact out of all the manufacturers hit by the recall, and domestically, the Japanese company must now add 259,479 completely new vehicles as well as a previously known 79,249 which had not been fixed, according to Honda, reports Reuters and Automotive News.
Models affected are in the 2002-2008 model year range, and are Canadian-built MDX (sold as an Acura in the United States), LaGreat (the Odyssey), the Inspire (the Accord in the US, the Japanese “Accord” is an Acura TSX in the US), and the Element.
Both driver-side and passenger side airbag inflators are potentially flawed in these models. And yes, these are the models which could potentially fling deadly shrapnel (as has already been claimed both in the US and in Malaysia). Honda states that new inflators will be from Takata or Daicel. The use of the competitor, according to Honda, is not out of a belief that Takata’s newest airbags are unsafe. Instead, Takata will be installing a newly redesigned inflator, and Honda is apparently satisfied with this redesign.
Between all of the models and makes, around 50 million vehicles are already recalled worldwide.
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