Japanese air bag supplier Takata Corp said it failed to inform the US auto safety agency of a 2003 rupture of one of its air bag inflators in Switzerland, according to an internal Takata report released by US regulators on Friday.
Takata also said in the report that its US arm, not the parent company, was largely responsible for designing, testing and producing tens of millions of defective air bag inflators.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) released a series of reports into Takata’s defective air bag inflators, which have been linked to at least 14 deaths and more than 100 injuries and sparked the largest-ever auto recall.
About 100 million Takata air bag inflators have been declared defective worldwide. In the US, nearly 70 million inflators have been declared defective.
The Takata report released on Friday examined the Japanese company’s handling of the problems since the inflators were first produced in 2000, as well as outside experts’ analysis of the defect.
In one event detailed in the report, Takata said it did not inform the NHTSA when it learned in 2003 of the rupture of an inflator in Switzerland. A US engineer at Takata asked if that incident should have been disclosed to the NHTSA in 2010, but it was not.
Takata said in its report it opted not to disclose the incident because the inflator was not made during the production period addressed in its 2010 response to the NHTSA. The report said the 2003 incident was the result of the Takata inflator being overloaded. Takata made production changes to address the problem in 2003.
Takata spokesman Jared Levy on Friday said that the report was required by NHTSA as part of the company’s settlement announced in November last year, when it agreed to a settlement that included a fine of up to US$200 million with NHTSA.
“Takata has focused extensive resources on researching and testing of airbag inflators, including working with independent, world class, technical experts to identify the causes of the inflator failures,” he said.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
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],”