Takata to depend on three key competitors for replacement parts supply

Takata, the company whose faulty air bags are behind a record vehicle safety recall, is depending on three of its key competitors to make millions of replacement parts, Bloomberg reported.

By next March, Autoliv, Daicel and ZF TRW Automotive would supply around 68 per cent of the inflators used to repair recalled vehicles, Takata said in a letter to US regulators.

Takata added, the three companies made around 50 per cent of the inflators for replacement kits in June.

The disclosure formed part of responses by automakers and air-bag suppliers last month to questions by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration regarding the progress of the safety recalls. Over 40 million vehicles had been recalled worldwide as a result of rupture of Takata air-bag inflators during deployment, a defect which had led to eight deaths and over 130 injuries.

The automakers hit by the crisis are cutting their dependence on Takata even as they work with the Tokyo-based company to identify the root cause of the defect. Honda, which needs to replace around 24.5 million inflators, said last year it would shift to acquiring them from Autoliv and Daicel.

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles said it had made a permanent switch to TRW for an alternate inflator design.

TRW, which was acquired by ZF Friedrichhafen earlier this year, said in a letter to National highway Safety Administrarion, it could make 10 million to 15 million replacement inflators a year using its spare capacity.

Toyota, which had recalled around 12 million vehicles globally, was now getting driver-side inflators from a supplier other than Takata, the company said in a separate letter last month to NHTSA.

Meanwhile, Takata would launch a new ad campaign and send a new mailing to the owners of millions of recalled vehicles by working with a major insurance industry group, The Detroit News reported.

The automotive supplier told NHTSA in a confidential 17 July memorandum made public Tuesday that it would also launch a new website - airbagrecall.com - to urge owners to get vehicles repaired under the ''Get the Word Out'' consumer outreach campaign.

The proposed ad campaign would feature all-block letters: ''URGENT AIRBAG RECALL NOTICE: Does your airbag inflator need to be replaced?'' Takata would focus advertising in high-humidity areas to start with, which, according to commentators would see advertisments in Google, Facebook, Twitter, CNBC, The Wall Street Journal, CNN and Yahoo.

The first phase would cover Florida, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands, Hawaii, Texas, Louisiana, Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama and Mississippi.

In one of the largest automotive recalls in history, Takata had agreed to recall nearly 34 million defective airbags that had caused six deaths and over 100 injuries over the last several years. (See: Takata recalls 34 mn defective car air bags).