Toyota Motor Corp and rival Nissan Motor Co yesterday announced the recall of about 6.5 million vehicles globally in the latest chapter of a crisis of defective airbags that have been tied to at least five deaths.
The world’s biggest automaker said its recall of 5 million vehicles affected 35 models globally produced between March 2003 and November 2007, while Nissan said it was calling back 1.56 million vehicles worldwide due to faulty airbags made by embattled supplier, Takata Corp.
“This will affect many of our markets, including Japan, Europe and North America,” a Nissan spokesman told reporters, adding that the risk of explosion was among a range of problems seen in the defective airbags.
“There might be many factors. We have seen risks that the metal casing for inflators can malfunction,” the spokesman added.
Nissan’s recall affects a range of models produced between 2004 and 2008.
Both automakers said there were no reports of deaths or injuries linked to their latest recall.
The announcement comes after about 20 million vehicles produced by major automakers, including General Motors Co and Honda Motor Co, were recalled because of the risk that their Takata-made airbags could improperly inflate and rupture, potentially firing deadly shrapnel at vehicle occupants.
At least five deaths have been linked to the defect, with one in the US initially investigated as a murder due to grisly injuries.
Toyota said the latest recall affects 1.35 million vehicles sold in Japan, 637,000 sold in the US and 1.26 million in Europe.
“We have been conducting various ongoing investigations regarding Takata-produced airbag inflators,” the firm said in an e-mail. “Among the parts collected from the Japanese market, certain types of airbag inflators were found to have a potential for moisture intrusion over time. As a result, they could be susceptible to abnormal deployment in a crash.”
Tokyo-based Takata has said the defect surfaces mainly in humid, hotter regions and resisted US authorities’ call for a national recall of cars with its airbags.
The firm had an open disagreement with the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which accused Takata of not helping with its investigation into the defects.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts