Ford Motor will expand its regional recall on Takata passenger side airbag inflators at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's (NHTSA) request.
The recall includes approximately 38,500 vehicles in the U.S. and federalized territories, an addition of approximately 13,000 vehicles, bringing the total number of Ford vehicles being recalled for Takata-related issues to 98,000.
This expansion includes certain 2004-2005 Ford Ranger and 2005-2006 Ford GTs originally sold or ever registered in Florida, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. It adds certain zip codes with high absolute humidity within Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Guam, Saipan and American Samoa per NHTSA's request.
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"I think what prompted Honda and Ford to expand the level of their recalls is quite simply that Takata didn't do the right thing, they didn't expand the scope of their recalls. So [these companies are] saying 'if you can't, we will'", Chris Richter, senior auto analyst at CLSA told CNBC.
The expansion of Ford's recall follows announcements on Wednesday that Honda and Chrysler will expand their Takata-related recalls. As of November 2014, a total of 16.8 million vehicles were recalled globally concerning Takata airbags, according to Reuters.
"Probably the biggest thing in [Takata's] favor is that auto airbag production is an oligopoly. There are only three major airbag makers in the world and a few smaller ones," Richter said.
"Takata does not have enough capacity to replace all the airbags if the recall is nationwide [in the U.S.] It may take as long as two years to finish up the recall if it's nationwide so that's one of the reasons why Honda has decided to go to Autoliv [a Swedish supplier] instead," Koji Endo, managing director at Advanced Research Japan told CNBC. "It takes six months before Autoliv can come up with additional inflators for airbags so it will take a long time for Takata alone."
"Takata doesn't really have any other choice than to focus on their most important areas, the Southern states, and then fix all the airbags," he said. "At this point, nobody has figured out exactly what went wrong [with Takata airbags], whether it was the inflators, the gas inside or the process of producing the airbags - that's why operators have issued recalls over and over again."
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"There is a possibility of Takata going into insolvency or getting rescued by someone else," he said. "It depends on the possible penalties they will have to spend on U.S. legal issues."