Original equipment manufacturer brands are looking pretty good to get every single Takata airbag inflator out of Australian circulation with roughly 22 months to go.
It needs to be acknowledged that despite the treasury’s February 2018 mandating of the Takata airbag recall campaign – the largest product recall in our history – by recommendation of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, car makers have stepped up.
Under Australian Consumer Law, unless an OEM is granted an extension (due to a lack of replacement parts, as an example), by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, then a breach of ACL applies.
The maximum penalties per breach of the ACL including unconscionable conduct or supplying consumer goods that do not comply with safety standards, is the greater of either a $10 million fine; three times the value of the benefit received; or 10% of annual turnover in the preceding 12 months, if a court cannot determine a benefit obtained from the offence.
Individuals found responsible for the breach of ACL could be looking at a $500,000 penalty.
Then there’s both individual and brand reputational damage to consider, some of which speculatively could fall on to franchised dealers as well,
AutoTalk has contacted several – but not all – OEM brands to get their official recall completion status as they approach the halfway mark.
Subaru Australia is close to completing its recall task of nearly 283,000 cars with Takata airbag inflators in its vehicles going back about 15 years.
Corporate affairs manager David Rowley tells AutoTalk Subaru has almost completed the recall, with a 92% completion of like-for-like Takata inflator replacements with completely new TRW-brand inflators – including written-off vehicles – and a 73% completion of permanent replacements.
“We’ve currently been through 205,692 ZF-TRW brand replacement airbags, with approximately 77,279 to go,” he explains.
TRW Automotive Holdings Corporation is an American original equipment manufacturer based in Michigan which was bought by ZF in 2015.
ZF-TRW designs, makes and distributes chassis systems, occupant safety systems, electronics, and general vehicle components to the global automotive supply chain.
Rowley says Subaru in Sydney has set specific dealer teams to the recall.
“A significant part of our network service centre resource is dedicated to Takata-related work,” he explains.
“We are working diligently with our dealer network to achieve the 2020 deadline and it’s to their credit that they are maintaining normal service work besides the additional Takata demands,” Rowley says.
“We have dispatched our own – and dealer network – technicians to a variety of remote locations, including Christmas Island, Badu Island, Thursday Island, Cooktown and Collinsville (QLD),” he adds.
At the request of Subaru Corporation in Japan, the removed Takata inflators are shipped back to Japan for destruction.
Also firmly placed to achieve the deadline is Tonsley Park, South Australia-based Mitsubishi Motors Australia Limited, which has just 22,110 airbag inflators to remove and/or replace, out of 143,563, for an 86% completion.
It’s a similar story over at Mazda Australia in Mulgrave, Victoria, with more than 92% completion of its nearly 253,000 inflators needing removal.
However, Mitsubishi head of corporate communications and government relations, Karl Gehling, says negligent owners need to be accountable.
“The number of people who refuse to bring cars that are either unregistered or simply do not action the recall is a concern for Mitsubishi Motors,” he says.
“Currently there is no way for us to ensure the inflators are replaced in a timely manner; Mitsubishi has been working with the wrecking industry to identify recalled airbags which have been removed from vehicles, for remote areas we have head office staff travelling on and off-shore to access vehicles which cannot be easily taken to an authorised dealer, and our dealer network has been instrumental in completion of the recall to-date,” Gehling explains.
“For owners who fail to take action to have the recall completed, we also believe their vehicle should not be able to continue to be re-registered,” he emplores state governments.
With NSW recently announcing it would block alpha Takata-affected vehicles from being re-registered – a victory for carmakers battling to get those last airbags out of the system – Victoria remains asleep at the wheel.
“This is a state issue, not a federal issue, as the state’s control vehicle registration, so we’ve written to every state and territory asking them to consider registration restrictions on vehicles which have received a minimum of three recall notices and haven’t had the work complete after 12 months,” Gehling continues.
“We believe 12 months is a reasonable time to give the vehicle’s registered owner flexibility to find the time to get the inflator replaced,” he says.
Mitsubishi highlights that having no alpha airbags in its vehicles as an advantage, but in the name of safety, wants the lower-risk beta airbags to receive similar rego bans.
“We believe beta airbag inflators should have a limit on how long the owner can continue to use the vehicle once they have received their recall notification,” Gehling says.
With just 13% of its airbags to remove, MMAL says it isn’t worried about the deadline.
“Beyond 2020 there will still be vehicles fitted with Takata airbags which require replacement but under the current ACCC mandatory recall requirements we will have met our obligations,” Gehling concludes.
A Toyota Australia spokesperson says, despite having strong market share in Australia for many of those Takata-related manufacturing years, its recall task is tracking nicely considering 582,764 vehicles were affected.
As of 15th January 2019, Toyota has made final fixes to 431,820 Toyota and Lexus vehicles.
“We have been notifying and responding to owners of affected Toyota vehicles in a number of ways, including by mail, phone, email, SMS, face-to-face visits, social media and toll companies, which has made over 485,000 outreach attempts to affected owners since April 2018,” Toyota says.
“There have been over one million visits to our recalls websites since May 2017.
”
The company says safety and security customers is the “number one priority”.
“We recently visited the remote area of Groote Eylandt in the Gulf of Carpentaria by ferry.
”
“During this outreach activity, our team recovered and repaired five affected vehicles with the strong support of our regional staff and rural dealers,” Toyota says.
Toyota dealers have also visited remote locations in the Torres Strait Islands at a distance from the nearest Gove Toyota dealer of 850km, in Bedourie, a solid 500km from the Bell & Moir Toyota service department in Mount Isa, and Mornington Island, in the Gulf of Carpentaria, is 468km from the glow of a Toyota logo.
“Toyota Australia’s dealer network is instrumental in the Takata recall process,” the spokesperson says.
“Over 500,000 Takata airbag inflator replacements in Toyota and Lexus vehicles have been undertaken by our extensive network of 279 dealers across Australia … our dealer network replaced approximately 208,673 affected Takata inflators in 2017 alone.
”
“[They] continued to recall vehicles in accordance with the Recall Notice, replacing approximately 159,384 affected Takata inflators in 2018,” Toyota adds.
In order to track down every last airbag, Toyota has also engaged a local company to locate and recover affected Takata airbag inflators from wrecking yards, but it says there’s still some way to go.
Under the active recall, Toyota has 66,151 inflators to remove, scheduled for additional future recall is another 84,793 inflators, totalling 150,944.
As for alpha inflators, Toyota had a total 26,988 to recover, and having replaced 22,779 as of January 15, there are just 4192 left.
Over at Ford Australia, they too have been busy bees.
“We have now replaced airbags on 77.
8 per cent of vehicles affected by Takata airbags,” service engineering manager Tim Nethercote says.
“Our Ford dealer network is critical and they’re doing an outstanding job; our dealers are responsible for returning every airbag, including photographing them and registering a warranty claim for the customer,” he explains.
Ford Australia, having commenced recall action from July 1, 2018, had 62,175 vehicles to be rectified and shy of 24,000 still to go.
With just 35% of its inflators to be replaced, Nethercote says reaching the farthest and most remote inflators will see its own special effort made.
“Our customers’ safety is paramount and we have a thorough and co-ordinated programme to reach owners whose cars haven’t yet had their airbags removed,” he says.
“As part of that, this year we are kicking off a salvage yard recovery programme which will recover airbags in cars being used for parts and gather records of cars that have already been crushed,” Nethercote explains.
“We are using a variety of methods to reach as many car owners as possible in rural and remote locations, in addition to mail, email, phone calls, dealer outreach, and advertising.
“We’ve also tailored our approach to the location.
For example, we’re using helicopters to reach vehicles in remote areas of the Northern Territory, Western Australia and Queensland, and using approved sub-let repairers to carry out airbag replacements in remote locations across Northern and Western Australia,” Nethercote says.
When a Ford is repaired, the company says, the airbags are returned to Ford, where a supplier then takes the airbags away, destroys them, and gives Ford Australia a certificate of destruction.
Nissan Australia is also nearly halfway to removing the 379,000 inflators from nearly 296,000 of its vehicles, from Pulsars and Patrols, to Navaras and Maximas.
According to the ACCC website, Nissan has 40% of its total inflators to go.
Interestingly, Tesla, with only 1219 vehicles with inflators to be replaced, has removed zero from circulation since the recall was mandated.
McLaren’s few Australian dealers have just 188 vehicles needing replacements yet only 143 have been rectified, as have Citroen vehicles numbering 2415 have had 790 cars repaired.
Holden, with its vast dealer network, has plenty of work to do, with only 92,425 vehicles fixed out of the 232,682 vehicles in total with Takata airbags aboard – that’s over 71% remaining.
HWL Ebswoth lawyer Evan Stents told the Australian Automotive Dealers Association last year, “importantly, if you get it wrong and someone is maimed or injured, then forget about what the government may fine you.
”
“You’re going to be liable certainly for a civil claim and possibly criminal prosecution,” Stents said.
As dealers face $1.
1 million corporate penalties or $220,000 personal fines for on-selling actively recalled Takata-infected vehicles, and car brands looking at hefty fines – or worse – for missing the December 31, 2020 deadline, the days are ticking away quickly.
Some have a lot of work to do indeed.
Join the conversation