US senators urge recall of all autos with Takata airbags

Takata has manufactured 887,055 air-bag inflators for Volkswagen since January 2011, 184,926 units in total for Tesla since January 2012, and the two companies are ongoing customers, According to a letter delivered last month to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The incident differs from the string of Takata inflator ruptures that prompted a massive recall campaign, which have involved frontal passenger- and driver-side airbags, not side airbags, and mostly occurred in vehicles that have been on the road for a decade or more. The side air bag inflated with far too much force.

Now, two U.S. senators who sit on the Senate panel that has been looking into the Takata situation are asking for the recall of all cars equipped with Takata airbags. “Are we still seeing the tip of the iceberg here?”

Expanding the recalls to all vehicles containing Takata airbags would add exponentially to the 32 million U.S. vehicles that regulators say are now affected by the callbacks. The problem, which has persisted for more than a decade, has brought congressional hearings and investigations from NHTSA and the Justice Department.

Toyota has been hardest hit by the recall affecting around 12 million of its vehicles; you would assume that after such an unprecedented hit someone would have made this decision long ago.

Takata has said the chemical appears to be one of many contributing factors to faulty airbags that rupture on deployment. Gillies said there have been no other incidents of air bag inflators rupturing in VW vehicles. The Tiguan driver did not seek medical attention, although Gillies did not know if he was cut by flying shrapnel from the inflator.

“While we are still investigating the cause of this malfunction, we believe it is unrelated to the previous recalls, which the extensive data suggests were a result of aging and long-term exposure to heat and high humidity”, Takata’s statement said. In addition, ammonium nitrate could become combustible if it is exposed to high-moisture conditions.

The agency had asked Takata in June to list the companies in North America that it supplies with inflators containing ammonium nitrate propellant. The Senators believe there is still some danger in new models.