Takata

General Motors is recalling nearly 900 vehicles in the US and Canada with Takata air bag inflators that could explode and hurl shrapnel in a crash. The recall covers certain Chevrolet Camaro, Sonic and Volt vehicles as well as the Buick Verano, all from the 2013 model year. The company says in documents posted Tuesday by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that the driver's front air bag inflator can explode in a crash due to a manufacturing defect. The inflators are among a group made by Takata that is under investigation by the agency but has not previously been recalled. Takata used volatile ammonium nitrate to create a small explosion to inflate air bags in a crash. But the chemical can deteriorate over time and explode with too much force, blowing apart a metal canister and spewing shrapnel. At least 26 people have been killed in the US by the inflators since May of 2009, and more than 30 have died worldwide including people in Malaysia and Australia. In ...

The US unit's reorganisation plan will include funds provided by automakers to help compensate those injured by the airbags

Takata airbags have been linked to at least 17 deaths around the world

$25 million will be given to US and $975 million to compensate carmakers and people who were injured

Takata is expected to pay a penalty of up to $1 billion

Takata is expected to pay a part of the penalty up front and the rest over a number of years

But it added that no official cause of death has been yet determined

The firm's airbags are now at the center of the auto industry's biggest recall

Millions of Takata's defective air bags have been recalled because their inflators can explode, spewing shrapnel in cars

Takata predicts it will make a profit of 13 billion yen for the financial year ending March 2017

The expansion may result in 665.4 billion yen ($6.2 billion) in additional cost

Takata and its automaker clients are still hashing out how the costs would be shared

More than a year after defective Takata airbags led to recalls and at least two fatalities, company officials in Japan presented falsified test data about a new component's design to Honda, their largest customer, according to internal documents. The fudged data, discussed in an internal 2010 document and cited in a report published on Tuesday by the Senate Committee on science, commerce and transportation, illustrates what investigators said was a pattern of deceit at Takata that continued long after the severity of the airbag defect came to light.The new design was experimental and never went into production, but Takata engineers in North America said they felt pressured by their counterparts in Japan to proceed with it despite what they viewed as its "high likelihood of failure."Another document in the Senate report showed that in 2013, after a third death and a series of recalls that covered millions of vehicles, a Takata manager wrote an internal memo warning that the company had

Volkswagen had said it would recall 850,000 vehicles

The faulty airbag inflators can explode with excessive force, causing metal shrapnel to spray within vehicle compartments