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Some NY cabs could avoid hybrid ban

The Nissan NV200 is having a rough go of it as New York City's Taxi of Tomorrow. The Greater New York Taxi Association wants the van banned on the grounds that it isn't a hybrid, and has gone so far as to sue the city to keep the NV200 out of taxi fleets. According to The New York Times, the city has responded by proposing to allow taxi drivers to use certain hybrid vehicles. The Taxi and Limousine Commission's proposal would allow any vehicle with an interior volume of 138 cubic feet or more. Unfortunately, that excludes nearly every machine that isn't the size of the NV200.
Technically, Nissan is working on a hybrid version of the Taxi of Tomorrow, but it may be years before that model hits the streets, and the Greater New York Taxi Association isn't satisfied with the city's offer. In a statement, the Association said, "These rules look like they have been created to short-circuit the litigation. We do not consider this to be a serious proposal."

Five automakers now being investigated by NHTSA for airbag woes

It appears that Toyota's renotification to owners of recalled vehicles from last year is just the tip of the iceberg for what could potentially be a much larger industry-wide recall. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is opening a preliminary evaluation investigation into roughly 1.1 million vehicles from Chrysler, Honda, Mazda, Nissan, Toyota and parts supplier Takata regarding faulty airbag inflators in several models.
NHTSA has received six reports - three directly, two from Takata and one from Toyota - of vehicles with ruptured airbag inflators from 2002-2006, which resulted in three injuries. So far, all six incidents have occurred in high humidity areas like Florida and Puerto Rico. According to Toyota's latest recall announcement, the inflators may have an improper propellant that could cause it to rupture in a crash and the bag to deploy abnormally.
This new investigation follows a previous recall from April 2013 of about 3.4 million vehicles worldwide for the airbag inflators from Takata. As Autoblog reported, Toyota jumpstarted the new situation when it found that the original list of serial numbers for the faulty part was incomplete and discovered more cars in need of replacement. Honda and Nissan told us that they were investigating whether further models would need called in again as well. Mazda told Autoblog: "Regarding the current Takata situation, we're working closely with NHTSA and investigating the situation, but nothing else to report at this time." Chrysler Group responded to us with the statement: "Chrysler Group engineers are conducting the appropriate analysis. The Company will cooperate fully with the National Highway Traffic Administration."

NHTSA releases updated Takata airbag recalled cars list, but it still has errors

Unfortunately, the government's list still contains errors.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has issued an updated list of vehicle models that it's urging owners to repair under the mushrooming Takata airbag inflator recall. The latest version adds vehicles from new automakers like Subaru and Ford that are missing from the original announcement, and it also removes erroneous entries from General Motors, leaving only the 2005 Saab 9-2X (a reskinned Subaru WRX), and the 2003-2005 Pontiac Vibe, a joint project with Toyota.