Faulty Takata airbags created major headlines more than two years ago, yet federal officials say less than a quarter of those airbags have been repaired. In a public meeting this morning, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration confirmed that as of Oct. 9, just 22.5 percent of the 23.4 million Takata airbags under recall in more than 19 million older U.S. cars have been fixed. The completion rate is 29.5 percent in areas of high absolute humidity like Florida and the Gulf Coast, where officials believe there is increased risk of airbag malfunctions and automakers have prioritized their recall efforts.
Related: Is Your Car Part of the Takata Airbag Recall?
The crisis involves faulty airbag inflators from supplier Takata Corp., which can inflate with too much pressure and send metal shrapnel into vehicle occupants. It affects cars from 10 U.S. automakers plus two commercial-vehicle manufacturers, and NHTSA has linked the problem to 98 injuries and seven U.S. deaths. (Investigators have linked an eighth death internationally.)
The agency still targets a 100 percent replacement rate nationwide, but it's unclear how long that will take. NHTSA is looking at whether it needs to accelerate the recalls — and how to do that, given replacement inflators "simply won't be available within the next month, or even the next six months," acting enforcement administrator Frank Borris said.
Jennifer Timian, who heads NHTSA's recall management division, said the recalls are "making progress, and the overall completion rates are constantly improving," but added that the "remedy completion rates are simply not good enough."
Amid manufacturing complexities, the production of replacement parts has been slow.
"Because the system is vehicle-specific, you just can't take a part designed for car A and put it into car B," said Stephen Ridella, NHTSA's vehicle crashworthiness director. "You can design an inflator from company X to go into a Takata airbag unit, but it has to be specifically designed for that specific unit. Development needs to be done, and that takes time."
Ridella laid out a number of options to speed the process, including further coordination with Takata and other airbag suppliers to get more replacement parts into the pipeline and authorizing independent mechanics — not just dealerships — to make the repairs.
NHTSA chief Mark Rosekind said the agency will have a decision on if and how it plans to accelerate the process by Thanksgiving.
Some Replacements the Same as the Old Ones
Takata has contracted with at least three other airbag manufacturers — Autoliv, Daicel and ZF-TRW — to help build replacement inflators, NHTSA officials said. Combined, the three other manufacturers supplied 70 percent of the inflators inside Takata's "inflator kits" — a new inflator plus all associated mounting hardware — it shipped this month.
Some of those kits have the exact same inflator as the faulty one, however.
The situation is "not ideal," Ridella said, but officials want to reset the clock on long-term humidity exposure while Takata finds a longer-term solution because "currently there is no alternative available for these vehicles."
That means certain consumers will have to get a replacement twice. It's a situation that's "a recipe for confusion," Rosekind conceded, but officials insisted that consumers should get it done anyway.
"This temporary replacement is safer than the older part in their vehicle because it is new, and it has not been exposed to the environmental factors that are believed to be related to the ruptures," Timian said. Consumers should "not skip the interim remedy, thinking that you'll just wait for the final remedy. Similarly, do not get the interim remedy and decide that you don't want to bother with going back for the second time for the final remedy. These are both bad ideas. The interim remedy is much safer than the original inflator part, but it will still eventually have the chance of rupture. The final remedy, once available, will be safe."
It's unclear how many of these interim inflators are part of the larger pool.
NHTSA has "not determined how many remedies will be interim because we haven't concluded which Takata inflators, if any, will meet our requirement of a safe inflator for the life of the vehicle," spokesman Gordon Trowbridge told us.
Side Airbags, Too
Until recently, frontal airbags comprised all of the inflators in question. But two recent Takata incidents raised the possibility that side-impact airbags, not just frontal ones, could also be at risk. One incident prompted GM's Oct. 18 recall of 395 U.S. cars and SUVs because of faulty inflators in the side-torso airbags embedded in the front seats. GM said it's not aware of any real-world incidents, and the recall stems from just one inflator in a larger batch that failed a test.
Still, the recall follows a June 7 airbag deployment on a 2015 Volkswagen Tiguan SUV that reportedly caused a Takata side curtain airbag to rupture.
A Volkswagen spokesman told Cars.com he has "not heard anything further" about the Tiguan investigation, but NHTSA grouped it today with the GM incident.
The agency notes that the newest airbags under investigation are "SSI-20" devices. It has ordered dozens of automakers and airbag-inflator manufacturers to inform NHTSA of "any credible report of an inflator rupture," said Scott Yon, chief of the vehicle integrity division in NHTSA's Office of Defects Investigation. "Based on these events, the SSI-20 inflator is now part of the Takata investigation, and NHTSA will continue to keep a close eye on this matter to ensure that all SSI-20 inflators that could have this problem are taken out of vehicles."
Trowbridge said he didn't have a total number of SSI-20 inflators in circulation.
Takata would not comment specifically on the Volkswagen or GM situations, both of which NHTSA tied to SSI-20 inflators. The company issued a statement to Cars.com that it's still investigating what happened in both side-impact airbag deployments.
"While we are still investigating the cause of this malfunction, we believe it is unrelated to the previous recalls, which the extensive data suggests were a result of aging and long-term exposure to heat and high humidity," Takata said. "We are cooperating closely with NHTSA and the vehicle manufacturers."
Loaner Vehicles 'Appropriate'
Rosekind noted that some automakers have made free loaner vehicles available to any consumers awaiting replacement parts who don't want to drive their cars.
Cars.com asked every automaker involved in the Takata recall if it offers free loaner vehicles to owners waiting to get their vehicles repaired. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, Honda, Nissan, Subaru and Toyota all said they do. GM said it does in areas of high absolute humidity. Ford said it does not. BMW, Mazda and Mitsubishi did not immediately respond.
NHTSA appears to favor them: "It would be appropriate for manufacturers to consider doing [loaner vehicles] during this time," Rosekind said.
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