Takata has said it will remedy health and saferty measures identified by the Mexico government at the same air bag plant Toyota Motor reportedly prevented its own employees from visiting for unspecified safety concerns.
Alby Berman, a spokesman for the Tokyo-based supplier, told Bloomberg News in an e-mail Takata would address by January the remaining 26 of 171 health and safety measures ordered by a Mexican government agency after an inspection four months ago.
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The news agency noted Toyota told a US regulator last month that an on-site review of the plant “was not possible due to internal travel restrictions for the safety of our associates”.
Toyota is among carmakers relying on the Takata factory in Monclova, Mexico, to produce replacements for flawed inflators made at the same plant years earlier and installed in over 13m cars that have since been recalled worldwide. Five deaths and more than 100 injuries have been linked to the air bags, which have ruptured and sent metal shards into motorists.
“It kind of raises a red flag,” Jochen Siebert, managing director at JSC Automotive Consulting, told Bloomberg of Toyota’s unwillingness to send employees to Takata’s plant.
“They don’t want to be too close to Takata at this point. The OEMs are starting to backtrack, including and especially Honda.”
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By GlobalDataAs reported earlier this week, Honda Motor North America executive vice president, Rick Schostek, told a subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee limited availability of replacement parts meant Honda was working with two other airbag manufacturers, Autoliv and Daicel, to boost production of new inflators, the air bag components at the centre of the problem.
Autoliv subsequently confirmed it would supply Honda with replacement inflators.
Of the 171 measures raised by Mexico’s labour ministry, four were “non-conformance”-related problems and have been addressed, Berman told Bloomberg.
Executive vice president Hiroshi Shimizu said earlier this week Takata had taken measures at the Mexico plant to address issues that have contributed to its air bag flaws.
Representative Diana DeGette, a Colorado Democrat who serves on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, said in a statement e-mailed to Bloomberg following the hearing theis week that problems in Takata’s Mexico factory showed “fundamental problems with this company”.
Honda has reported four US deaths related to Takata’s air bags in its cars, as well as one fatal accident in Malaysia that killed a pregnant woman and her unborn child, Bloomberg noted.
