Supplemental Initial Decision That Certain Frontal Driver and Passenger Air Bag Inflators Manufactured by ARC Automotive Inc. and Delphi Automotive Systems LLC, and Vehicles in Which Those Inflators Were Installed, Contain a Safety Defect

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>National Highway Traffic Safety Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. NHTSA-2023-0038]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Supplemental Initial Decision That Certain Frontal Driver and Passenger Air Bag Inflators Manufactured by ARC Automotive Inc. and Delphi Automotive Systems LLC, and Vehicles in Which Those Inflators Were Installed, Contain a Safety Defect</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), Department of Transportation (DOT). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of supplemental initial decision; request for public comments. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> NHTSA is confirming its initial decision that certain frontal driver and passenger air bag inflators manufactured by ARC Automotive Inc. and Delphi Automotive Systems LLC, and vehicles in which those inflators were installed, contain a defect related to motor vehicle safety. NHTSA is issuing this supplemental initial decision to address in greater detail the basis for the agency's initial decision and to ensure that all vehicles and manufacturers that would be impacted by any recall order are included within the scope of the initial decision. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before September 4, 2024. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit written submissions to the docket number identified in the heading of this document by any of the following methods: • <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal:</E> Go to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Follow the online instructions for submitting comments. • <E T="03">Mail:</E> Docket Management Facility: U.S. Department of Transportation, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, West Building Ground Floor, Room W12-140, Washington, DC 20590-0001. • <E T="03">Hand Delivery or Courier:</E> 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, West Building Ground Floor, Room W12-140, between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. ET, Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays. • <E T="03">Fax:</E> (202) 493-2251. <E T="03">Instructions:</E> All submissions must include the agency name and docket number. Note that all written submissions received will be posted without change to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> including any personal information provided. Please see the Privacy Act discussion below. We will consider all written submissions received before the close of business on September 4, 2024. <E T="03">Docket:</E> For access to the docket to read background documents or written submissions received, go to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> at any time or to 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, West Building Ground Floor, Room W12-140, Washington, DC 20590, between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays. Telephone 202-366-9826. <E T="03">Privacy Act:</E> In accordance with 49 U.S.C. 30118(b)(1), NHTSA will make a final decision only after providing an opportunity for manufacturers and any interested person to present information, views, and arguments. DOT posts written submissions submitted by manufacturers and interested persons, without edit, including any personal information the submitter provides, to <E T="03">www.regulations.gov,</E> as described in the system of records notice (DOT/ALL-14 Federal Docket Management System (FDMS)), which can be reviewed at <E T="03">www.transportation.gov/privacy.</E> <E T="03">Confidential Business Information:</E> If you wish to submit any information under a claim of confidentiality, you must submit your request directly to NHTSA's Office of the Chief Counsel. Requests for confidentiality are governed by 49 CFR part 512. NHTSA is currently treating electronic submission as an acceptable method for submitting confidential business information (CBI) to the agency under part 512. If you would like to submit a request for confidential treatment, you may email your submission to Allison Hendrickson in the Office of the Chief Counsel at <E T="03">allison.hendrickson@dot.gov</E> or you may contact her for a secure file transfer link. At this time, you should not send a duplicate hardcopy of your electronic CBI submissions to DOT headquarters. If you claim that any of the information or documents provided to the agency constitute confidential business information within the meaning of 5 U.S.C. 552(b)(4) or are protected from disclosure pursuant to 18 U.S.C. 1905, you must submit supporting information together with the materials that are the subject of the confidentiality request, in accordance with part 512, to the Office of the Chief Counsel. Your request must include a cover letter setting forth the information specified in NHTSA's confidential business information regulation (49 CFR 512.8) and a certificate, pursuant to § 512.4(b) and part 512, appendix A. In addition, you should submit a copy, from which you have redacted the claimed confidential business information, to the Docket at the address given above. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Allison Hendrickson, Office of the Chief Counsel, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC 20590; (202) 366-2992. The publicly available information on which this supplemental initial decision is based is available on the agency's website at <E T="03">https://www.nhtsa.gov/recalls?nhtsaId=EA16003, https://www.nhtsa.gov/recalls?nhtsaId=PE15027,</E> and on the public docket under Docket No. NHTSA-2023-0038. The information in the investigative file for which confidential treatment has been requested was shared with the manufacturers that would be affected in the event of a recall order, as required under 49 U.S.C. 30118(a) and 49 CFR 554.10(b). That information was shared with the manufacturers under a protective agreement. The information subject to confidentiality requests remains unredacted in this document pursuant to 49 U.S.C. 30167(b). File-path citations to the investigative file have been shared with the manufacturers in a confidential appendix to this decision. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Pursuant to 49 U.S.C. 30118(a) and 49 CFR 554.10, NHTSA confirms its initial decision that certain frontal driver and passenger air bag inflators manufactured by ARC Automotive Inc. (ARC) and Delphi Automotive Systems LLC (Delphi), and vehicles in which those inflators were installed, contain a defect related to motor vehicle safety. NHTSA previously issued an initial decision on September 5, 2023. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> After additional consideration of the totality of the evidence, including comments previously submitted in this proceeding, NHTSA is issuing this supplemental initial decision to address in greater detail the basis for the agency's initial decision and to ensure that all vehicles and vehicle manufacturers that would be impacted by any recall order are included within the scope of the initial decision. This action allows for additional transparency and additional comment from any interested persons. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  88 FR 62140 (Sept. 8, 2023). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  NHTSA is addressing certain comments in this supplemental initial decision to describe the basis of its initial decision more fully and, in certain instances, to update certain information, including its calculation of predicted future ruptures. NHTSA reviewed and considered all written and oral comments previously submitted in this proceeding. NHTSA intends to further and more fully address all comments it ultimately receives if and when it issues a final decision in this proceeding. </FTNT> The additional information provided in this notice confirms the agency's initial decision that certain frontal driver- and passenger-side hybrid toroidal air bag inflators manufactured by ARC and Delphi from 2000 through the full implementation of the automated borescope (the subject inflators) contain a defect related to motor vehicle safety. The implementation of the borescope, beginning in August of 2017, was fully completed in June of 2018. The latter date is a correction from the January 2018 completion date identified in the September 5, 2023 initial decision. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  ARC completed implementation of the automated borescope process on lines producing PH7 inflators (which are passenger-side inflators) in January 2018, and then completed implementation on the remaining lines producing toroidal inflators in June 2018. </FTNT> Based on available information, approximately 51 million subject inflators were manufactured and installed in approximately 49 million vehicles in the United States. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> The subject inflators were incorporated into air bag modules manufactured by five air bag module suppliers and ultimately used in vehicles manufactured by 13 vehicle manufacturers: BMW of North America, LLC (BMW), FCA US LLC (FCA), Ford Motor Company (Ford), General Motors LLC (GM), Hyundai Motor America, Inc. (Hyundai), Jaguar Land Rover North America (JLR), LLC, Kia America, Inc. (Kia), Maserati North America, Inc., Mercedes-Benz USA LLC, Porsche Cars North America, Inc. (Porsche), Tesla Inc., Toyota Motor North America, Inc. (Toyota), and Volkswagen Group of America, Inc. (Volkswagen). <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> Although JLR was not included in the September 2023 initial decision, the agency has confirmed that it has vehicles in the U.S. with the subject inflators. <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  While the correction to June 2018 increases the number of subject inflators, based on best available information, the agency is adjusting its estimate to approximately 51 million inflators. The exact number of recalled inflators and vehicles would be confirmed by the manufacturers as part of any rec ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 153k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━