BMW Has Exploding Air Bags, Too; 1.6 Million Vehicles Recalled

BMW has issued a precautionary recall for 1.6 million vehicles worldwide for the same defective Takata air bags that have been plaguing automakers.

The company is not aware of any crashes or injuries related to the air bag inflators in BMW vehicles, Bloomberg News reported. The faulty parts come from the Japanese supplier Takata and have been connected with recalls from Toyota, Honda and Nissan, which together called for repairs on more than 5 million cars last month.

BMW is recalling 3-Series models built from May 1999 to August 2006, expanding a recall from the middle of last year for 240,000 cars produced from 2001 to 2003. The automaker will cover the cost of repairs and termed the recall a "voluntary precautionary measure," according to TIME.  

The 2013 recall was also for problematic Takata air bags, which have been known to explode. Last April, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration described the risk by saying "the inflater could rupture with metal fragments striking and potentially seriously injuring the passenger seat occupant or other occupants," according to The Wall Street Journal.

In June, the total number of vehicles recalled for the problem reached at least 10.5 million vehicles in the last five years.

BMW began looking into the issue a few weeks ago, inspecting cars to see if they contained the faulty component. Around a third of the recalled vehicles are in the U.S.

While the company has had issues locating the faulty airbags due to bad recordkeeping, Takata believes that the problematic airbags were supplied for BMW, Chrysler, Ford, Honda, Mazda, Nissan and Toyota vehicles sold in the U.S.