Honda Recalls 750,000 Vehicles for Bad Airbag Deployments

Honda (American Honda Motor Co.) is recalling ~750,000 Honda and Acura vehicles from model-years 2020-2022 for unintentional airbag deployments during a crash. According to documents released publicly today by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the front passenger seat weight sensor may crack and short circuit, failing to suppress air bag deployment during an accident as intended by the engineering design. A capacitor in the printed circuit board of the seat weight sensor may develop an internal short circuit from the exposure to environmental humidity.

“Due to a natural disaster at the manufacturing plant of a tier-2 supplier, the tier-1 supplier temporarily changed the base material in the printed circuit board of the seat weight sensor, which was not sufficiently verified for its intended use. The alternative base material could allow additional strain to the printed circuit board that can lead to a capacitor cracking and an internal short circuit,” Honda said in the required recall filing with NHTSA.

Affected recalled vehicles are: 2020-2022 Pilot, Accord, Civic sedan, HR-V, Odyssey, 2020 Civic coupe, Fit, 2021-2022 Civic hatchback, 2021 Civic Type R, Insight, 2020-2021 CR-V, CR-V Hybrid, Passport, Ridgeline, Accord Hybrid, 2020 Acura MDX, 2022 Acura MDX, 2020-2022 Acura RDX, and 2020-2021 Acura TLX vehicles.

Dealers will replace the seat weight sensors, free of charge as required by US safety regulations. Owner notification letters are expected to be mailed 18 March 2024. Owners may contact Honda customer service at 1-888-234-2138. Honda’s numbers for these recalls are XHP and VHQ. Owners may also contact the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Vehicle Safety Hotline at 1-888-327-4236 (TTY 1-800-424-9153) or go to www.nhtsa.gov about NHTSA recall 24V064.

Chronology

• 20 August 2020 – Honda received a warranty claim for the issue.
• March 2021 – Honda initially investigated the issue with the component supplier, Aisin Electronics Illinois, and could not find any manufacturing defects at the time.
• 23 October 2021 – Based on multiple warranty claims, Honda continued to investigate and monitor the market.
• November 2023 – Honda noticed an increased trend of the issue and continued to analyze the market occurrences.
• 25 January 2024 – Honda determined that a defect related to motor vehicle safety existed and decided to conduct a safety recall.
• As of 25 January 2024, Honda has had 3834 warranty claims, and no reports of injuries or deaths related to the safety defect from 13 June 2020, through 19 January 2024.