Honda expands air bag recall after Takata complies with U.S. order

Reuters

Published May 28, 2015 04:44AM ET

Honda expands air bag recall after Takata complies with U.S. order

By Chang-Ran Kim

TOKYO (Reuters) - Honda Motor Co (T:7267) called back about 340,000 cars in Japan to replace air bag inflators made by Takata Corp (T:7312) after the Tokyo-based parts supplier last week agreed to comply with U.S. orders to expand some of its previous recalls.

Honda, Japan's third-biggest automaker, disclosed the recall in a filing in Tokyo on Thursday. It said it made similar filings in the United States on Wednesday, but declined to disclose the number of cars affected pending an official announcement by U.S. safety regulators.

Recall numbers for other regions around the world were still being worked out, a Honda spokesman said.

Takata is at the center of a global recall of tens of millions of cars for potentially deadly air bag inflators that could deploy with too much force and spray metal fragments inside vehicles. Regulators have linked six deaths to the component so far, all on Honda's cars.

After months of resisting, Takata last week agreed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to roughly double its U.S.-based recall to 34 million vehicles spanning 11 automakers, including more models and years of production.

Other automakers are expected to follow Honda with new filings.

Honda said the latest recall in Japan includes about 80,000 cars fitted with driver-side air bag inflators that had been part of a previous recall, but which had not yet been collected.

Another 260,000 cars would be added to replace passenger-side air bag inflators in Japan, with more to follow overseas, Honda said.

The automaker will source replacement inflators for the additional recalls from Takata, as well as rivals Autoliv Inc (N:ALV), TRW Automotive [TRWTA.UL], and Daicel Corp (T:4202), it said.

Honda had just expanded its Takata-related recalls by nearly 5 million cars earlier this month to about 20 million vehicles since 2008 after its own investigations found two new problems with inflators it had retrieved for sampling. The root cause of those defects are unknown.