Regulators are expected to announce as early as Wednesday that at least 35 million additional airbags made by Takata will need to be fixed, according to a person briefed on the matter. This would more than double what is already the largest automotive recall in American history.
The airbags can unexpectedly explode, sending metal parts hurtling into the cabin. At least 11 deaths worldwide have been linked to the defect.
The expansion would bring the total of recalled Takata airbags to at least 63 million in the United States — possibly affecting nearly one in four of the 250 million vehicles on America’s roads.
At issue is Takata’s use of a compound called ammonium nitrate, which can become unstable over time or when it is exposed to moisture. Takata has wrestled with the makeup of the compound over the years, eventually adding a drying agent to make it more stable. The new recalls focus on airbags that do not have the drying agent.
Scott Upham, founder and chief executive of the automotive consulting firm Valient Market Research, said that the wider recall was an admission by Takata that its use of ammonium nitrate — a cheap, but potent, compound more often used at large-scale sites like coal mines — was a safety risk.
“Finally, there’s enough scientific evidence to point to the humidity issue as affecting the propellant,” Mr. Upham said. “For a long period of time, they denied that ammonium nitrate was to blame. But this does validate there are fundamental issues with the chemical itself.”
Ever since the first Takata airbag recall of about 4,000 vehicles in 2008, the company insisted for years that the problems did not lie in the design of the airbag inflaters with ammonium nitrate, but instead were the result of manufacturing flaws or quality control problems.
Internally, though, it harbored doubts, quashing the results of tests that failed, manipulating data to conform with automakers’ safety requirements and continually revising patents.
