The next gen North American Accord will feature the newer airbags (current iteration shown).
Seems like the Takata airbag incident has shaken Honda’s confidence in the company to the point where the next iteration of the North American Accord sedan, will no longer have Takata airbags in them. Honda has supposedly selected a rival manufacturer to develop the vital life-saving component for its next Accord. The rival Honda is defecting towards is called Toyoda Gosei and their airbags will be fitted to the next Accord set out to release somewhere in 2017.
One simply cannot underestimate the importance of these “balloons”.
The recent debacle over Takata’s “unsafe” airbags (Oh! the irony) which called for over 21 million cars to be recalled globally has left several people injured and has claimed the lives of 5. These catastrophic incidents were caused by the airbag projecting dangerous metal shards into the cabin, thus injuring/killing the occupants. The irony in this story is that Takata and Honda have a long standing history together, wherein the latter helped the former by a long way in its growth.
Ever since 2008, Honda has had to recall over 13 million vehicles globally, and 10 million in the States, alone. Toyoda Gosei is to now supply Honda with the airbags, including knee and curtain airbags for the Accord (for the next iteration), which is one of the best selling cars in North America. Takanobu Ito, a Chief Executive at Honda has apparently spoken privately about his frustration with Takata, a manufacturer of seatbelts and airbags, that Honda had always considered to be a trustworthy member of its group of suppliers.