Editor's note: This story was published in the Feb. 23 print edition of Automotive News shortly before the announcement of Ito's departure.
Now that Honda Motor Co. has recalled 14.3 million vehicles to fix defective Takata airbag inflators, outgoing CEO Takanobu Ito says he is prepared for a difficult possibility: If the replacements also go bad someday, they would need to be replaced too.
Supplier Takata Corp. is producing 450,000 replacement inflators per month, but the company has not yet identified the root defects that cause some inflators to explode and spew metal fragments into the cabin.
Honda and other automakers are using the replacements anyway, on the premise that the new inflators -- which don't seem to malfunction -- are safer than the old inflators.
And if Honda subsequently learns that it must replace the new ones after five, eight or 10 years, then it will do so, said Ito, who discussed the recall during a Feb. 13 media test drive in northern Japan.
"It goes without saying that we would have to replace them" if the root cause is the inflator's basic design, Ito said. "Ideally, we want to determine the cause clearly and come up with clear measures. But the worst problem is that we are not sure about the cause."
Ito has a sense of urgency about the recalls because inflator failures have been linked to six deaths -- all in Honda vehicles -- and Honda accounts for more than half of the 25 million Takata-equipped vehicles recalled worldwide since 2008.
The cause of the inflator malfunctions has triggered an intense debate. Two experts contacted by Automotive News -- a former Takata engineer and a professor in Missouri with expertise in explosives -- say the propellant used to inflate Takata airbags is inherently unsafe.
But Takata argues that the malfunctions likely were caused by manufacturing mistakes that the company subsequently fixed.
On Wednesday, Feb. 18, Takata spokesman Jared Levy reiterated the supplier's contention that the replacement inflators are reliable. "We are confident that our new airbags are safe, and our testing continues to show that the inflator issues apply to older products in high-humidity areas," Levy said.
Federal regulators are still studying a trove of Takata documents to figure out why the inflators are defective, and why they kept failing after the supplier claimed it had fixed them. On Friday, Feb. 20, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration fined Takata $14,000 per day for failing to cooperate fully with the probe.
In the meantime, the agency is taking a wait-and-see stance about replacing the replacement inflators.
"As we have in the past, we will take action if a remedy is found to be inadequate," said Gordon Trowbridge, a NHTSA spokesman.
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