WCA May 2018

From the Americas

Biggest defective airbag case nears resolution as Takata reaches a deal with death or injury claimants, others The American unit of Takata, whose airbags have been linked to more than a dozen deaths, has reached an agreement with creditors, attorneys for affected motorists, and automakers supplied by the Japanese auto parts company. According to court documents filed on 11 th February in Wilmington, Delaware, the deal will ease Takata’s way out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy and permit it to sell its viable operations. Takata entered a guilty plea last year as part of a $1 billion settlement with the US Department of Justice over the airbags, which were shown to explode too forcefully. This prompted the largest recall in automotive history and forced the company and its US unit, TK Holdings, into bankruptcy. TK Holdings had been seeking a judge’s approval for its plan to exit bankruptcy over the objections of a committee for injured drivers and a separate committee of unsecured creditors. But according to the court papers the two committees joined automakers and Key Safety Systems – which seeks to acquire the business lines of Takata – to address and satisfy the main objections to the plan. A trust is to be established to compensate victims of the faulty airbags, and automakers will surrender some of their claims against Takata. As part of a plea deal with the Justice Department, the proceeds of the trust will go toward satisfying personal injury and wrongful death claims against Takata. According to Reuters (11 th February), Key Safety Systems plans to acquire Takata’s viable operations for $1.6 billion.  Presuming the 11 th February agreement is approved by the United States Bankruptcy Court, an injunction would prevent driver-claimants from suing any of the 13 automakers that joined the agreement. These include General Motors, Ford Motor, Toyota Motor, and the US affiliates of Honda Motor and Volkswagen AG. Elsewhere in automotive . . .  The Japanese automaker Subaru definitely knows how to celebrate. To mark five decades of selling cars and crossovers in the USA, at the Chicago auto show in February, the company’s US arm announced that it was building 6,300 specially badged, limited-edition models. Headed to Subaru dealers shortly would be 1,050 examples each from the five most popular lines plus a combined total of 1,050 sports coupes and sedans. Reviewing the models on display in Chicago, Andrew Ganz of The Car Connection reported that the special-edition cars share Subaru ‘Heritage Blue’ metallic paint plus satin chrome exterior touches, silver-finish seatbelts, 50 th anniversary logos inside and out, and special floor mats. All based on range-topping trim levels, they range in price from $29,200 to $42,055. The Car Connection observed that a pricey special-edition car is a long way from the first Subaru to be marketed in the USA. That was the company’s TV ad tagline for its bug-shaped 360 minicar, at a sticker price $300 under that of the rival Volkswagen Beetle (which itself cost less than $2,000). Wrote Mr Ganz, “Times have changed.”

 Embark, a San Francisco start-up, announced on 6 th February that it had completed a coast-to-coast test drive of an autonomous semi-truck – a combined tractor unit and one or more semi-trailers. The big vehicle covered around 2,400 miles from Los Angeles to Jacksonville, Florida, without relying on human input on the freeways. As noted by tech reporter Lora Kolodny of CNBC , Embark, which does not manufacture its own vehicles, has so far integrated its self-driving systems into five trucks and plans to acquire 40 more semis within the year for further testing and long-haul deliveries. Unlike other tech ventures working on self-driving, Embark uses machine learning software and data from onboard sensors to map the truck’s surroundings in real time to avoid obstacles. Others ‘pre-map’ their routes and augment their map with data from the onboard sensors. Breakthroughs in metals  The 3D printing market is projected to be valued at $32.78 billion within five years, but 3D printing of plastics has advanced faster than with metals. An advance in the effective and safe 3D printing of steel announced by the University of Kassel, in Germany, could help to close the gap. To date, expensive titanium alloys have dominated 3D printing with metals; steel, while cheaper, presents technical difficulties. As noted by Tim Sandle of Digital Journal (10 th February), the new process addresses these by applying electric beam or laser printing treatment to a TRIP steel alloy. This reportedly builds up micrometre-thin layers of strong and resistant material, which in tests has shown high tolerance to defects and damage.  Famously, aluminium’s light weight comes at the cost of strength. But researchers at Purdue University (West Lafayette, Indiana) think they may have overcome that trade-off. As reported by Michael Irving on the technology website New Atlas , their development of new aluminium alloys, said to be about as strong as stainless steel, holds particular promise for the corrosion-resistant coating of electronic devices and vehicles. ‘Stacking faults’ occur naturally in metals at the microscopic level, and two layers of these faults are known as ‘twin boundaries’ or ‘nanotwins’. These phenomena can strengthen a material. The challenge for the Purdue team was to overcome the tendency of aluminium, with its ‘high stacking fault energy,’ to self-correct for the faults. To increase strength and ductility and improve thermal stability, the researchers had to find a way to introduce two obstinate twin boundaries into nanograined aluminium. (“Faulty Aluminium Alloys Sport the Strength of Stainless Steel,” 29 th January) Their solution employs two separate techniques. The first, ‘shock-induction,’ uses a laser to bombard ultra-thin sheets of aluminium with particles of silicon dioxide. The second draws on a process called magnetron sputtering to introduce iron atoms into the aluminium’s crystal structure. Xinghang Zhang, an author in two studies describing the work, told New Atlas that the result was an aluminium-iron alloy of exceptional strength and “a lot of potential commercial impact.” Dorothy Fabian – Features Editor

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Wire & Cable ASIA – May/June 2018

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