Airbag recalls top 9.8m

Japan may face a shortfall in supplying replacement airbags as car companies recall about 9.8 million vehicles in the country to swap potentially defective devices made by Takata. Toyota, Honda and Nissan are among the marques that have stepped up precautionary recalls in their home market after widening their safety campaigns in the US. This is adding about 7.3m units to the list of call-backs. Manufacturers are first fixing older vehicles and those believed to have higher risk of rupture, says Masato Sahashi, of Japan’s transport ministry. “If we include the preemptive recalls, we are unable to secure all replacement parts necessary,” he adds. “We may be facing a shortage of replacement kits down the road.” Takata has told regulators in the US it is depending on three of its key competitors to produce the bulk of millions of replacement parts. Its inflators have ruptured during deployment and sprayed parts at motorists leading to more than 40m vehicles being recalled worldwide. The transport ministry may be able to narrow the range of vehicles that need to be fixed once the root cause is determined, says Sahashi. About 30 per cent of all the vehicles recalled in Japan have been repaired and. excluding pre-emptive recalls, the completion rate is 82 per cent. Car makers are installing about 80,000 to 100,000 airbag replacement kits a month in Japan. Components for as many as 460,000 under regular recalls have been secured, reports Reuters. Autoliv, Daicel and ZF TRW Automotive produced about 50 per cent of the inflators for replacement kits in June, a proportion expected to rise to about 68 per cent by March, Takata states in a letter to US regulators.