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Ford, Chrysler and Mazda expand scope of Takata airbag recalls

The scope of the Takata airbag inflator recall is ballooning once again across the United States. Where Honda has elected to take its driver-side airbag campaign nationwide, Chrysler Group and Ford have now announced expanded regional actions to cover some passenger-side airbag inflators. Mazda is adding more regions, as well. For Chrysler Group, the campaign covers the inflators on 149,150 examples of the 2003-model-year Ram 1500, 2500 and 3500 pickups. The recall is limited to vehicles sold or ever registered in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas and the territories of American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, Saipan, and the Virgin Islands. The company will begin notifying affected customers on January 19. According to Chrysler's announcement of the action, the passenger side inflators in these trucks "are of a type that is not used in any of the other vehicles affected by Chrysler Group's regional field action." The automaker says that it's not aware of any actual failures or accidents in these pickups and even claims there are no "observed failures in laboratory testing of its airbag modules." The company is continuing to study the problem, though. Ford is taking a similar step by issuing a recall of inflators for 38,500 examples of the 2004-2005 Ranger and 2005-2006 Ford GT. The campaign only affects vehicles originally sold or ever registered in Florida, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. Certain zip codes of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Guam, Saipan and American Samoa are also covered. There's already precedent for passenger-side airbags to be covered under the Takata inflator recall. When many automakers announced campaigns in June, BMW, Chrysler, Ford, Honda, Mazda, Nissan and Toyota all included that side in some of their repairs. Subaru subsequently did, as well. In addition, Mazda is expanding the scope of its recall to add Florida, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Saipan, Guam, American Samoa, US Virgin Islands, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas to the affected areas. The company estimates that it has a total of 86,773 vehicles in need of repair. Mazda is also teaming with Toyota to begin independent testing of the Takata inflators. Scroll down to read all of the automakers' announcements of these newly expanded recalls. Statement: Air-Bag Inflators December 3, 2014 , Auburn Hills, Mich.

Waymo’s autonomous vehicles are driving 25,000 miles every day

Waymo, the former Google self-driving project that spun out to become a business under Alphabet, has driven 8 million miles on public roads using its autonomous vehicles. Waymo CEO John Krafcik shared the company's milestone Friday while onstage with Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval at the National Governors Association conference in Santa Fe, N.M. The figure is notable when compared to where Waymo was less than a year ago. In November, the company announced it had reached 4 million miles, meaning the company has been able to double the number of autonomous miles driven on public roads in just eight months. Waymo's fleet of self-driving vehicles is now logging 25,000 miles every day on public roads, Krafcik said. He later tweeted out the stats along with a graphic. Waymo has 600 self-driving Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivans on the road in 25 cities. It's also adding 20,000 Jaguar I-Pace crossovers and has plans for another 62,000 Pacificas. The company also relies on simulation as it works to build an AI-based self-driving system that performs better than a human. In the past nine years, Waymo has "driven" more than 5 billion miles in its simulation, according to the company. That's the equivalent to 25,000 virtual cars driving all day, everyday, the company says. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js This newly shared goal signals Waymo is getting closer to launching a commercial driverless transportation service later this year. More than 400 residents in Phoenix have been trialing Waymo's technology by using an app to hail self-driving Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivans. The company says it plans to launch its service later this year. Waymo's driverless ride-hailing service has received the most attention. But the company is also working to apply its self-driving system to three other areas, including logistics (so trucking), making public transportation more accessible and, further off, plans to work with automakers to make personally owned vehicles. Waymo, and more specifically Krafcik, has never provided much detail about how its self-driving system would make public transportation more accessible. On Thursday, Krafcik teased a future announcement.

Treasury says auto bailout tally drops to $20.3 billion

In December, the US Treasury announced that it was going to sell all of its shares in General Motors within 12 to 15 months. The first tranche of the 500-million total shares was purchased by GM, which took 200 million of them at $27.50 per share. That price represents an eight-percent premium over the market price at the time. The remaining 300 million shares will be sold "through various means in an orderly fashion."
Of the $418 billion disbursed through the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), a report in Automotive News indicates that "about 93 percent" has been paid back, and the latest figures put Treasury's loss from the program overall at $55.58 billion. That's a $4.1 billion improvement on the last figure, when the expected red ink added up to $59.68 billion. The auto industry's portion of that loss is estimated to be $20.3 billion, a 16-percent drop from the earlier estimate of $24.3 billion.
The Treasury now owns 19 percent of GM, but if all goes well, there will be no more cause for anyone to utter "Government Motors" by the end of Q1 next year. A loss of some kind is still expected, however. Although GM's stock price is close to $29 at the time of this writing, that's still $4 below its IPO price and well below the $72 share price necessary for the government to come out even on its GM investment. On second thought, maybe the ribbing will continue.