Ford to start recall of 2.9 million vehicles for air bag inflators by 1 April

Ford Motor said on Friday it will start notifying owners by April 1 of its new recall of 2.9 million vehicles in North America with potentially faulty driver-side Takata air bags after U.S. regulators demanded the repair work in January.

The automaker said in January it would comply with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration request and that the recall would cost $610 million.

The defect, which leads in rare instances to air bag inflators rupturing and sending possibly deadly metal fragments flying, led to the largest automotive recall in U.S. history of over 67 million inflators.