Four Japanese car companies including Nissan and Toyota Motor are recalling 3.4 million vehicles sold worldwide due to airbags manufactured by Takata Corp according to Reuters.
The Takata airbags supposedly are at risk of catching fire or possibly injuring passengers. The recall, announced on April 11, is the largest recall ever for airbags made by Takata, the second largest supplier of airbags and seatbelts.
The recall is also the largest since Toyota was forced to recall over 7 million models back in October according to Reuters.
"When the last recall took place, we inspected everything such as the site of manufacturing, but we were not able to identify this problem," said Hideyuki Matsumoto, another spokesman for Takata in a press statement.
Cars involved in the recall include Toyota's Camry and Corolla, the Nissan Maxima, and Honda Civic. All models being recalled were produced in 2000 or later.
If a crash were to occur in one of those models, the airbag for the front passenger seat may not inflate properly thanks to a manufacturing defect in the propellant used in the airbag inflator according to Reuters.
No crashes or injuries have occurred because of the defective airbags according to Toyota, Honda, and Nissan.
This is the largest recall for Takata since 1995 when the company was involved in a recalled of over 8 million vehicles thanks to defective seatbelts.
Select non-Japanese automakers were also supplied with faulty airbags said Takata spokesman Toyohiro Hisikawa. The non-Japanese automakers were not identified since those vehicle's have yet to be recalled.
From 2008 and 2011, Honda Motor Co was forced to recall about 2.8 million vehicles after finding a defect with driver-side airbags supplied by Takata.
The companies will exchange the faulty airbag inflators for new ones. The process will take approximately two-and-a-half hours for most vehicles.
"The inflators themselves are not so expensive, but there is the cost to cover for the hours spent to fix the problem," said Kohei Takahashi, an auto industry analyst at J.P. Morgan in Japan according to Reuters.
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