Nissan Motor Co, BMW of North America and Ford Motor Co accused Takata Corp of fraud in a lawsuit seeking to force the airbag manufacturer to cover losses they incurred because of its faulty inflators that have been linked to at least 17 deaths worldwide.
The automakers claim the embattled Tokyo-based company withheld information about the inflators, which have caused airbags to rupture and injure people. The carmakers are fighting consumer suits alleging they knew about the flawed devices.
“Ford [and other vehicle manufacturers] would not have purchased these airbag systems from Takata as they had the true and accurate test data and information was communicated to Ford,” the Dearborn, Michigan-based company said in its court filing. “If Ford had known of the true and accurate information and data, it would have insisted that the problems be resolved prior to installation of the airbags in Ford vehicles or would have refused to purchase them for installation into those vehicles.”
Nissan and BMW made similar arguments in their filings on Friday in Miami Federal Court.
The new claims against Takata come at a precarious time. Kyodo News reported on Wednesday last week that Takata might file for bankruptcy after separating healthy business units into a new company.
Takata last month said that its steering committee has recommended Key Safety, a US airbag maker owned by China’s Ningbo Joyson Electronic Corp (寧波均勝電子), as its preferred bidder.
Finding a new owner is a crucial step in the company’s restructuring.
Last week, attorneys for accident victims and vehicle owners suing Takata alleged in court that the automakers knew about the inflator defect for years before a recall of the airbags began.
Takata pleaded guilty on Feb. 27 to criminal charges as part of a US$1 billion settlement with US prosecutors.
The company agreed in January to pay a US$25 million criminal fine and establish a US$125 million fund to pay victims and a separate US$850 million fund to reimburse automakers for recalls.
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
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],”
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
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day