Extent of Takata Airbag Recall Unclear

Takata Corp. says it has supplied 34 million potentially dangerous airbag inflators for cars sold in the U.S. But that doesn't mean 34 million vehicles face recall, Reuters says.

The news service notes that some cars contain a defective driver-side inflator, others a defective passenger-side inflator, and some contain both. In about 400,000 cases, inflators replaced by earlier recalls must be replaced again.

Reuters says the duplications mean some vehicles may have been counted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration as many as eight times. The news service says its analysis concludes that replacing the 34 million inflators identified by Takata will involve about 16.2 million separate vehicles.

NHTSA and Takata tell the news service they don't know how many vehicles will be recalled. Both say their focus is on replacing dangerous inflators.

The Takata recalls began with a Honda campaign November 2008. Since then, nine other carmakers and one commercial truckmaker have issued multiple recalls to address the same problem: inflators that could explode and spew shrapnel into the passenger compartment when triggered by a crash.