Fiat Chrysler to halt use of dangerous air bag inflators

FCA said the 2016 Jeep Wrangler’s passenger-side inflator will be the final vehicle to be made with the Takata airbag inflators.

Last month, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration ordered an unprecedented recall of all non-desiccated ammonium nitrate inflators made by Takata, with the recall campaign encompassing almost 70 million inflators in the USA alone.

The 2016 Jeep Wrangler’s front passenger-side inflator is the final FCA airbag component to migrate from non-desiccated ammonium nitrate in the USA market.

Fiat Chrysler was one of four companies that was accused by a Nelson, D-Fla., of continuing to equip cars with Takata air bags after they were recalled due to their defective inflators.

North American production with the suspect inflators will stop by next week while global production is expected to end by mid-September, the automaker announced. The air bags use ammonium nitrate in propellants, a volatile chemical linked to ruptures.

Fiat Chrysler said there have been no failures with the inflator in the Jeep Wrangler and said tests were performed on almost 6,300 older versions of the inflator without any problems.

The automaker says within the next week it will stop manufacturing vehicles in North America with airbag inflators that don’t contain the drying agent. Takata has been under fire for a while now and has been associated with at least 13 deaths and 100 injuries worldwide. The company however is not aware of the failures which involve this inflator.

“These defective air bags are still being produced … and installed as replacement inflators in the recalled vehicles, meaning that millions of consumers are going to have to replace their air bags not once, but twice”, Nelson, who is the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate’s Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, said during a recent hearing on Capitol Hill. The company found that they all performed as intended.

Unsold new vehicles that are so equipped will be identified for customers.

The Wranglers are now not under recall.

The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said there have been no ruptures in any vehicles built since 2008.

Members of Congress and U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx urged companies, including Toyota and Fiat Chrysler, to disclose the vehicles that would be subject to future recalls.

The investigation by NHTSA revealed that these inflators can degrade after several years and might inflate with an extra force causing damage.