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Takata Responds to U.S. DOT and NHTSA Statements


takata

AUBURN HILLS, MI & TOKYO -- February 23, 2015: Takata Corporation, a leading global supplier of automotive safety systems, today issued the following statement in response to a press release issued by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) and the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

“We are surprised and disappointed by the DOT/NHTSA letter and press release today, and we strongly disagree with their characterization that we have not been fully cooperating with them.”

“We are surprised and disappointed by the DOT/NHTSA letter and press release today, and we strongly disagree with their characterization that we have not been fully cooperating with them.

In response to NHTSA’s Special Orders, we have provided the agency with almost 2.5 million pages of documents to date. Since the Special Orders were issued, we have been in regular communication with NHTSA staff regarding our ongoing production of documents in response to the Special Orders.

We have also been meeting regularly with NHTSA engineers on efforts to identify the root cause of the inflator issue. We continue to keep NHTSA closely informed on the extensive testing efforts we have undertaken. That work has, so far, supported our initial view that age and sustained exposure to heat and humidity is a common factor in the small number of inflators that have malfunctioned. In fact, as recently as last week, we met with NHTSA to review the results of these efforts.

We have been working closely with automakers and have significantly increased production and are working with other inflator suppliers to support OEM national safety actions. We are also in the process of implementing an effort to accelerate replacement recalls in those geographic areas identified as being most at risk.

We remain fully committed to cooperating with NHTSA in the interests of advancing auto safety for the driving public.”