Honda is still grappling with the issue of airbags in its cars which were manufactured by Takata Corporation, Japan. The company has been recalling vehicles of different models throughout the world for replacing the faulty airbags. In this process, 5,088 cars in India have been identified and the car owners are being directly contacted by the company to bring in their vehicles for the free replacement.
It is reported that the airbags fitted in the front, both in the driver seat and the passenger seat, have some issues with the inflator and may not deploy properly in the event of an impact. The company says it is doing this replacement as a precautionary exercise, ensuring there is no risk to the car users.
The breakup of the 5088 models goes like this: 2099 Honda City cars manufactured between 2007 and 2013; 2577 Honda CR-V vehicles made between 2003 and 2008 and again in 2011, and 350 units of the Honda Accord built in 2003. Besides these, there are also 52 Honda Civic and 10 Honda Jazz manufactured between 2006-2008 and 2009 to 2012 respectively.
The company has arranged for the free replacement camps to be organised across the country at the dealer points /authorised service stations of Honda Cars India Limited. These camps start from July 29.
As it can be noticed from the details above, most of these vehicles relate to those manufactured some years back and not of very recent batches. In such cases, the issues get reported after some accident somewhere and then based on the feedback, the company does its own internal verification and if it feels it is safer to change the airbags, the process is immediately set in motion. The vendor of the offending component, in this case, the Takata Corporation, would have been fully involved in the process and would possibly bear the full cost of the replacement operation as well. This is a global effort.
The last such large recall in India was that of 3,669 Honda Accord cars, which were pulled in for correcting a defect.