Japanese carmaker Honda Motor Co., had been hit hard with lot of criticism this year owing to recalls over problematic Takata airbags used in their vehicle that have left with five dead and many injured. The frequent recalls have indeed left Honda quite frustrated over the entire fiasco, and some sources from the company have said that Honda is personally conducting tests on older vehicles to look for defects in those vehicles as they believe that Takata has not worked upon defined norms.
Speaking more on the occasion, a source from the company said to Reuters, “We doubted if Takata was producing air bags to the specifications we had mutually agreed on. When we did not receive a clear analysis of what was happening, we decided to conduct our own tests ... and we found the quality of those inflators to be all over the map in term of key quality metrics.” Kaoru Tanaka, Honda's chief spokesman, said, the company does conduct component quality tests at times when they suspect that the vehicle may have defects, but mostly do not reveal results or comments immediately on specific tests.
Takata indeed has a different version of the situation and has denied the fact that Honda has tested the airbags as they were unconvinced with Takata’s explanations and has said that they were unaware of being told about any quality issue being reported by the company in this regard. Adding more to the subject, Takata spokesman said to Reuters, “If Honda did the kind of quality tests on Takata inflators you’re describing, wouldn’t you assume Honda would communicate with us, to ask us about the quality lapses they supposedly found? As far as we know, and we looked into it extensively, there has been no such communication between us.”
