À̹ÌÁö È®´ë South Korea¡¯s largest automaker Hyundai Motor Co. and its smaller sibling company Kia Motors Corp. said on Monday that their domestically sold cars have not shown the airbag problem that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in the United States is currently investigating in relation to the four deaths in their vehicles during accidents.
The automakers¡¯ statement comes after NHTSA said Saturday it has opened a probe into problems with airbag control units in Hyundai Motor and Kia Motors sedans that have reportedly led to four deaths in the U.S.
A total of 425,000 vehicles of Hyundai Motor¡¯s 2011 Sonatas and Kia Motors¡¯ 2012 and 2013 Fortes are subject to the agency¡¯s investigation that is known to be related to malfunctions of the airbag control units built by German auto supplier ZF-TRW. NHTSA is known to be looking into vehicles of other auto manufacturers that are fitted with the same component to check if similar problems might have been raised.
Hyundai Motor and Kia Motors said that domestically sold cars are also loaded with ZF-TRW air bags but they are not aware of any single similar cases. The automakers added that the production process and air bag operation system of domestically sold cars are different from those sold in the U.S., which is why they are not associated with the latest problem. An unnamed official from Hyundai Motor and Kia Motors said that Sonata sedans in the U.S. are manufactured in the U.S. facility while those domestically sold are manufactured in Korea.
In case of Forte, the sedan model has been manufactured in Korea and shipped to the U.S., but the model sold in the U.S. in 2012 and 2013 use the advanced airbag system while domestically sold model the depowered airbag system. According to the company, the advanced airbag system deploys an airbag when its embedded sensor detects a passenger on a seat at the time of an accident, whereas the depowered airbag system deploys an airbag in the advent of a crash regardless of a seated passenger.
By Lee Seung-hoon and Lee Eun-joo
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