Business Day Honda to Expand Airbag Recall Nationwide as Takata Resists By AARON M. KESSLER and HIROKO TABUCHIDEC. 3, 2014 WASHINGTON — Even as Takata, the Japanese auto supplier, continued to resist demands that it expand the recall of its airbags nationwide, Honda Motor told lawmakers on Wednesday that it would take that action on its own and use replacements from other suppliers if necessary. The automaker said it would broaden its recall of driver’s-side airbags beyond the 11 states it already covers and notify consumers that they should have their airbags replaced. “We’re really trying to redouble our efforts to make sure they understand we want them to bring that vehicle in,” Rick Schostek, executive vice president for Honda North America, told a hearing of a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee. The airbags have been a flash point for regulators and lawmakers as the auto industry has become engulfed in a safety crisis this year. More than 11 million vehicles in the United States have been recalled, and the airbags have been linked to at least five deaths, all in cars made by Honda. At issue is a recall, first issued in June, that has mostly been limited to Florida, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, areas associated with high humidity. The moisture, Takata says, could be causing the airbags to explode violently when they deploy, sending metal fragments flying into the cabin. Honda did not immediately say how many vehicles would be affected by the expanded recall. Already, it has recalled 6.2 million cars worldwide, by far the most of the automakers.Honda’s announcement came as Takata and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration remained in a standoff over the scope of the recalls. The safety agency had ordered the company to issue an expanded recall by the end of Tuesday, but in a letter to the agency, Takata defied that order and appeared to say that the agency did not have the authority to make it. Hiroshi Shimizu, Takata’s senior vice president for global quality assurance, gave no ground on Wednesday. “At this moment, there is not enough scientific evidence to change from regional recall to national recall,” Mr. Shimizu said in response to questioning by Representative Henry A. Waxman, a California Democrat and the committee’s ranking minority member. Mr. Waxman pressed Mr. Shimizu on the rationale behind the limited recalls. “If I have a car with a Takata airbag in Yulee, Fla., just south of the Georgia line, it’s an urgent matter that I bring it in for a recall,” Mr. Waxman said. “But if I instead live 15 minutes north of that line in Kingsland, Ga., I gather the position is that my car is perfectly safe. Is that a correct assumption?” Mr. Shimizu would not budge. “Based on the data we collected,” he said, “if it’s a vehicle used or registered outside the area, we consider it’s safe and not a concern at this moment.” Mr. Shimizu also refused to state clearly that recent airbag ruptures in humid regions had been caused by a safety defect, saying that the root cause was still not known. But, he said, “if our products are defective, and supported by scientific data, we are responsible for that.” Even Honda, which has largely stood by its supplier during the regulatory scrutiny, appeared uneasy with the growing standoff. “We heard this morning about the request to Takata and the answer Takata gave yesterday,” Mr. Schostek said. “Once we understood, we decided to take action.” Honda had already broadened the recall beyond the two states and two territories originally covered in June. But it had stopped short of a nationwide recall, saying only that it would make new airbags available for customers who requested them in states it had not included. In a concession that reflected the urgency, and difficulty, of finding enough replacement parts, Mr. Schostek said the automaker was talking with at least two other airbag manufacturers, including the Swedish supplier Autoliv, about meeting the demand for replacing the airbags. Beyond the issue of expanding the recall, a central point of contention between Takata and regulators is whether the safety agency has the authority to make such an order at all. In Takata’s response to the agency’s order, the company said the agency’s authority did not extend to makers of original parts and that the manufacturer of the vehicle would be responsible for the recall. “Under the N.H.T.S.A. statute, only manufacturers of motor vehicles and replacement equipment are required to decide in good faith whether their products contain a safety-related defect, and if so, to conduct a recall,” wrote Mike Rains, the company’s director of product safety. After the hearing, David J. Friedman, the agency’s deputy administrator, took issue with any notion that it could not force Takata because the company is a supplier and not a manufacturer. He said the fact that the agency had sent Takata an order to conduct a recall indicated that safety officials thought the company was subject to the order. But Allan Kam, who served as a senior enforcement lawyer for the agency for more than 25 years before he retired in 2000, questioned whether the agency could force Takata’s hand. “I would have advised that the letter be sent to the vehicle manufacturers,” Mr. Kam said in an interview. “Takata can’t be required by N.H.T.S.A. to conduct a recall on airbags installed in vehicles by the vehicle manufacturer. The agency can only require vehicle manufacturers to conduct the recall.” He explained that “replacement equipment” referred to products sold on the aftermarket. Mr. Kam noted that if Takata issued a regulatory filing declaring the airbags defective at a national level — as it has done in the past in different recalls — it would be incumbent on automakers to issue their own recalls. In a statement, the safety agency said it was still reviewing Takata’s response to the order. In addition to challenging the agency’s authority, Takata said that the regulators did not have enough evidence to support the expansion. “The currently available reliable information does not support a nationwide determination of a safety defect” in vehicles with driver’s-side airbag inflaters, Mr. Rains wrote. He said a nationwide recall would include more than eight million additional vehicles. Some lawmakers were not persuaded by Takata’s letter. “I find the response tendentious, argumentative and not particularly helpful,” said Representative Leonard Lance, Republican of New Jersey. When asked to respond, Mr. Shimizu conferred with his interpreter and eventually said, “Yes, that is our statement.” The complexity of the issue left many lawmakers bewildered and concerned over whether Takata understood the root cause of the defect and whether the replacement parts themselves were safe. Repeatedly, Mr. Shimizu emphasized that Takata’s replacement airbags — which the company says it is producing at a rate of 300,000 a month — were safe. “Unfortunately, we had some issues in the past,” he said. But now, he said, Takata’s manufacturing processes were “well controlled and well managed.” He said, however, that Takata was still investigating the cause of recent airbag explosions. Honda was not the only automaker expanding its recalls on Wednesday. After demands from regulators, Chrysler has expanded its recall of vehicles with Takata airbags to cover more states, but the safety agency said Chrysler’s announcement fell short of its demands. And in a further sign of the contention over the issue, Chrysler said it was still investigating whether there was a safety defect at all. Correction: December 3, 2014 Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misstated the nature of a comment by Representative Fred Upton. He said, “It is clear something must be done to restore the public’s trust and ensure safety on the roads” in a statement last week; it was not a quote from any prepared testimony. Aaron M. Kessler reported from Washington and Hiroko Tabuchi from New York. Danielle Ivory and Rebecca R. Ruiz contributed reporting from New York. A version of this article appears in print on December 4, 2014, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Honda Decides to Expand Airbag Recall as a Defiant Takata Resists. Order Reprints| Todays Paper|Subscribe
Posted on: Sun, 07 Dec 2014 23:10:45 +0000
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