Chrysler gives in to US demand for national airbag recall

Bloomberg/Washington

The automaker formerly known as Chrysler Group gave in to pressure from US regulators and expanded a regional recall of Takata Corp air bags nationwide even though it said the parts it will replace aren’t even defective.
The expansion adds 2.89mn vehicles in the US and more than 400,000 in Canada, Mexico and other nations, according to a statement on Wednesday from the automaker, which this week changed its name to FCA US LLC. Vehicles affected include some Dodge pickups, Chrysler 300 sedans and Dodge Magnum station wagons.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration had criticised the Auburn Hills, Michigan-based automaker for not meeting demands to include in earlier recalls all inflators covered by a Takata defect information report. The expanded recall today is for driver’s side air bag inflators and brings the total number of Chrysler and Dodge brand vehicles affected by the Takata fix to about 3.7mn worldwide.
“They botched it,” Erik Gordon, a business professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, said in an e-mail. “It will cost them as much as it would have had they done it earlier, but without getting credit for acting responsibly.”
FCA US is a unit of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV.
NHTSA has pressed Takata and its customers to expand recalls following airbag ruptures tied to four US fatalities and the death of a pregnant woman and her unborn child in Malaysia.
FCA’s response shows its now intends to comply with NHTSA’s request for a national recall, the agency’s deputy administrator, David Friedman, said in an e-mailed statement.
“NHTSA will review Chrysler’s official filing once it is received to ensure that it captures all affected models and years,” Friedman said.
FCA said it’s aware of one related injury involving one of its older-model sedans in southern Florida, a region “marked by persistent, high, absolute humidity,” which is believed to be a contributing factor in the airbag failures.
Neither FCA nor Takata “has identified a defect in this population of inflators,” FCA said.
Takata rejected NHTSA’s request earlier this month to expand a recall of drivers’ side airbag inflators beyond about 8mn cars in high-humidity areas, where four motorists have died. Friedman had told lawmakers in Congress that the agency believes the driver’s side defect isn’t related to humidity, because there have been fatalities outside hot and humid states.
Takata, in refusing to go along with the agency’s request, said in US newspaper ads yesterday that it would work with NHTSA and the affected companies to increase production capacity of replacement parts to support any recalls initiated by automakers.
“Takata’s number one priority is the safety of the driving public,” the Tokyo-based company said in an e-mailed statement on Wednesday. “We respect Chrysler’s decision and we are committed to support any decisions our customers make regarding safety campaigns.”
Models in Wednesday’s expansion include the Ram 1500, 2500 and 3500 pickups, the Ram 3500 Chassis Cab, the Dodge Durango and Chrysler Aspen full-size SUVs, the Chrysler 300 and Dodge Charger sedans, the Dodge Magnum station wagon and the Mitsubishi Raider and Dodge Dakota small pickups, FCA said.
FCA was among 10 automakers led by Toyota Motor Corp that met December 11 in the Detroit area to discuss hiring an industrywide, independent engineering firm for evaluation of Takata’s air bag inflators.
The automakers said in a joint statement then that they completed an initial organising meeting, putting them a step closer to hiring an outside investigator.
Honda Motor Co last week said it would add about 2.8mn vehicles to a safety campaign in the US that would expand nationwide after having been limited to high-humidity areas. The company had already called back more than 5mn cars in the country, the most among the 10 automakers.
Takata’s other affected customers in the US market are Nissan Motor, Bayerische Motoren Werke, Mazda Motor Corp, Ford Motor, General Motors, Fuji Heavy Industries’ Subaru and Mitsubishi Motors Corp.
Five of those automakers have driver’s side Takata air bags, including FCA, Honda, BMW, Mazda and Ford. BMW is the only one to not say if it will expand its recall nationwide.