Cars and Drivers

US Orders Takata to Recall Millions More Airbags

Paul Ausick

Published: January 7, 2018 7:44 am

Last Updated: January 12, 2020 4:45 am

By the end of this year, Japan-based airbag maker Takata Corp. will have recalled about 65 million cars sold in the United States that included defective airbag inflators made by the company. In the latest round, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has ordered the firm to recall more than 3 million additional vehicles according to a report at Bloomberg.

The NHTSA is ordering Takata to recall model year 2013 vehicles ever registered in the states of Alabama, California, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands (Saipan), and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

This recall also includes some 800,000 model year 2009 vehicles ever registered in the states of Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, New York, North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

Major vehicle manufacturers affected by the model year 2013 recalls include General Motors, Honda, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, Subaru, and Tesla.

The model year 2009 recall includes vehicles from Toyota, Honda, BMW, Ford, GM, Nissan, and Subaru, among others.

Takata and the vehicle manufacturers will determine which vehicles received the defective inflators either as original or replacement equipment. The NHTSA expects “numerous” vehicle recalls to be announced by the automakers, not Takata.

The defective airbag inflators have been linked to 13 U.S. deaths and hundreds of injuries. The inflators can explode in a crash and spray passengers with potentially lethal metal shards.