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Honda S660 Concept portends a new kei car for 2015

Apart from a tiny, one-paragraph mention in a press release about the Honda show stand in general, the company hasn't said very much about its completely charming S660 Concept. The model would seem very much to be a look ahead at a possible successor to the Beat kei car for Japanese customers, though we've been told that we shouldn't expect any kind of translation or product for the American market (despite certain key executives wanting more sports cars in the US).
Honda tells us only that the S660 roadster features "advanced styling" and "new initiatives such as Super cockpit interior." We do think that the confines of the S660 look particularly driver-focused, with a carbon fiber steering wheel clad in soft leather, very racy looking vented seats and instruments tilted to keep the pilot constantly informed.
Honda President and CEO, Takanobu Ito, also touched on the S660 in his remarks at the press conference, saying that the model "embodies the freewheeling thinking of young Honda engineers, who want to make a cool car that is unique to Honda." Takanobu also said that the concept will be developed into a production model for 2015, which is great news for Japanese drivers.

Honda accused of not reporting all airbag problems

The Takata airbag recall that has afflicted a number of automakers may have just taken a very bad turn for Honda, which has already recalled over one million vehicles. Clarence Ditlow and the Center for Auto Safety have accused the Japanese manufacturer of failing to report two "injury-and-death" incidents. To determine just what happened, the company has initiated a third-party audit.
According to Bloomberg, CAS claims Honda failed to report fatalities in 2009 and 2013, a point Honda doesn't seem to contest, indicating that it didn't report so-called "verbal claims."
"It is our understanding that some manufacturers choose to include these types of verbal claims, and that these constitute the majority of the injury-and-death claims that they report to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration," the company told Bloomberg via email. "We believe this practice accounts for the vast majority of the difference between the total number of injury-and-death claims reported by Honda compared to certain other manufacturers."

Honda fined $70 million for failing to report deaths, injuries

The federal agency charged with keeping US motorists safe announced Thursday it has fined Honda $70 million for failing to report death and injury data in a timely manner. Honda failed to report 1,729 incidents involving death or injury over an 11-year period, according to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration officials. Federal law requires automakers to report deaths, injuries and certain warranty claims. Officials said Thursday that information could have been used to spot trends in automotive defects and potentially save lives. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said it is possible the Department of Justice could conduct a criminal investigation into the failures, but it was not immediately known whether the Justice Department would pursue such charges. NHTSA officials still don't know much about the 1,729 incidents of death or injury that were missing from the Early Warning Reporting records, because in some cases, they still haven't been reported. Mark Rosekind, the agency's new administrator, said Honda is still in the process of sending investigators the missing information. "Our first task will be to review that, and determine actual deaths and injuries," he said. "That data is in the process of coming to us and being processed right now." The $70 million is the largest civil penalty levied against an automaker in history, officials said. It actually consists of two $35 million penalties, the maximum allowed by statute for a single TREAD Act violation. In this case, NHTSA broke the fine into separate violations, one for the missing deaths and injury information and one for the company's failure to report certain warranty-claim information. Honda reached an agreement with the federal government in late December, in which it accepted additional regulatory oversight and third-party audits that will ensure reporting is properly completed in the future. Image Credit: Copyright 2015 Drew Phillips / AOL Government/Legal Honda transportation