Four Japanese automakers, including Toyota Motor Corp and Nissan Motor Co, are recalling 3.4 million vehicles sold around the world because airbags supplied by Takata Corp are at risk of catching fire or injuring passengers.
The move announced last week was the largest recall ever for airbags made by Takata, the world's second-largest supplier of airbags and seatbelts. Shares of Takata tumbled almost 10 percent in Tokyo trading.
Four Japanese automakers, including Toyota Motor Corp and Nissan Motor Co, are recalling 3.4 million vehicles sold around the world because airbags supplied by Takata Corp are at risk of catching fire or injuring passengers.
The move announced last week was the largest recall ever for airbags made by Takata, the world's second-largest supplier of airbags and seatbelts. Shares of Takata tumbled almost 10 percent in Tokyo trading.
The recall, also including vehicles from Honda Motor Co Ltd and Mazda Motor Corp, the largest since Toyota pulled back more than 7 million vehicles in October. The scale of the recent safety actions underscores the risk of huge global supply chain problems as automakers increasingly rely on a handful of suppliers for common or similar parts to cut costs, analysts have said.
The recall covers some of the top-selling Japanese cars, including Toyota's Camry and Corolla, and rivals like the Nissan Maxima and Honda Civic. All of the vehicles in question were manufactured in or after 2000.
Takata said it learned of the problem from an automaker it did not identify in October 2011, and that it has since been investigating. Once the cause was determined, the supplier alerted customers, who decided on the recall.
Toyota, Honda and Nissan said there were no reports of injuries or deaths because of the defective airbags.
Honda said it became aware of the issue after a crash in Puerto Rico in October 2011 in which a passenger front airbag deployed with too much pressure and caused the inflator casing to rupture. A U.S. spokesman for the Japanese automaker was not sure whether that accident was the first case to bring the issue to light.
Takata was alerted about the accident and the car was eventually shipped to the United States for study, the Honda spokesman said.
In July and August 2012 in Japan, at scrapyards where airbags were being recycled, officials noted that airbags in some Honda vehicles deployed "strangely," adding to the probe, the spokesman said.
In an accident, the airbag for the front passenger seat may not inflate correctly because of a manufacturing defect in the propellant used in the airbag inflator, the companies said. As a result, there is a risk of fires starting or of passengers being injured.
Tokyo-based Takata said it supplies airbags and seatbelts to major automakers including Daimler AG and Ford Motor Co as well as the Japanese brands.
Some non-Japanese automakers were also supplied with the faulty airbags, Takata spokesman Toyohiro Hishikawa said. He declined to name those automakers.
General Motors Co said Takata is a supplier, but that the problem affected only about 55,000 Pontiac Vibe cars from model year 2003 built for the U.S. and Canadian markets. The cars were assembled at the Fremont, California, plant GM previously ran in a joint venture with Toyota and were included in Toyota's total recall number, a GM spokesman said. GM dealers will service its cars.
BMW has an undetermined number of vehicles affected by the recall, a U.S. spokesman for Takata said.
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