U.S. regulators took a step toward forcing a recall of as many as 51 million airbag inflators that could explode in a crash. This is an escalation of a safety issue in the auto industry for years.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) issued a "supplemental initial decision" at the end of July, saying it considers the parts defective after a lengthy comment period and industry pushback. The agency named Knoxville, Tennessee-based ARC Automotiv Inc. and the former Delphi Automotive Systems LLC as the manufacturers of the flawed airbags.
ARC representatives did not initially reply to a request for comment on its latest action. The airbags involved have been used by at least a dozen car manufacturers, including GM, Stellantis NV, Volkswagen AG, and Hyundai. GM recalled in May nearly 1 million vehicles from 2014 to 2017 that were equipped with ARC inflators.
NHTSA has said it identified at least nine cases of ruptured airbag inflators that led to injuries, including two deaths, dating from 2009 to as recent as March of 2023.
Delphi Automotive, which no longer exists as its own company, sold its airbag business to a unit of Sweden's Autoliv Inc. in 2009. NHTSA said it "has not verified the entity that has legal responsibility" for the Delphi inflators.
The forced recall of the airbag inflators is similar to the recall of more than 100 million defective airbag inflators made by the now-defunct Takata Corp., which was the biggest auto recall in U.S. history. While the ARC problem appears to be unrelated, the prospect of recalling tens of millions of vehicles to get repairs would be a significant burden on the industry and car owners.
