LOS ANGELES – American Honda Motor Co., again expanding a 2008 recall, will replace driver’s-side airbag inflators in an additional 378,758 U.S. vehicles from the 2001 and 2002 model years, reported Automotive News.

The inflators may deploy with too much pressure, rupturing a surrounding casing and sending metal fragments through the airbag cushion material to cause injury or death.

Honda said in a statement that it is aware of 12 incidents related to the issue.

The original recall in late 2008 was for about 4,000 Civics. No new incidents have been reported since an expanded recall in July 2009 that covered about 440,000 vehicles. One fatality, announced along with the second recall, has been reported.

The announcement brings the total American Honda recall to more than 826,000 vehicles.

With it, Honda has added 2001 and 2002 Accord, Civic, Odyssey, CR-V, and selected 2002 Acura TL models to the earlier actions. Some vehicles in Canada are included.

Vehicles in other markets are subject to parent Honda Motor Co.’s recall procedures. The global total covered by Tuesday’s development is 438,000.

Customers will be notified starting this month.

All the systems were assembled by airbag supplier TK Holdings, a subsidiary of Takata Corp.

Two manufacturing processes were used in making the airbags. Although Honda could verify the quality of one manufacturing process, it could not verify the other, said John Mendel, American Honda executive vice president, in a conference call.

He called the problem “a propellant issue.”

Toyota’s dealers, who have started to repair defective gas pedals in millions of U.S. vehicles, are extending hours, making house calls and offering other services as they try to repair the damage to Toyota’s reputation, The Associated Press reported.

Toyota is sending dealers a piece of steel about the size of a postage stamp that can be inserted into the accelerator mechanism and eliminate the friction that causes the problem.

Toyota is giving U.S. dealers payments of up to $75,000 to help them offer extra measures like house calls.

“Within the next several days, you will receive a check from us (no strings attached) with a simple request – ‘do the right thing on behalf of Toyota customers’,” Toyota group vice president Bob Carter said Tuesday in the letter to dealers obtained by the AP.

Carter thanked dealers for their extraordinary measures. He also suggested other steps, like additional hires to help with recall repairs, dedicated recall service lanes and complimentary oil changes.

“Toyota dealers already know the first and most critical step of rebuilding the confidence and trust of Toyota owners is the interaction and service they receive in your dealership,” Carter said.

Toyota is sending checks this week based on the number of cars each dealer sold in 2009. Dealers who sold fewer than 500 cars will get $7,500. Dealers who sold more than 4,000 will get $75,000.

Toyota has around 1,200 U.S. dealers.

The cost of Toyota Motor Corp.’s two high-profile recalls totaling 9 million vehicles may run as high as $2 billion, The Detroit News reported.

“It’s definitely in the billions, and it includes the cost of fixing the problems and the additional incentives that Toyota will have to offer at least the rest of this year,” Jesse Toprak, an analyst with auto pricing firm TrueCar.com, told the newspaper.

The Japanese automaker also faces potentially huge costs associated with long-term damage to its reputation and litigation.

Toyota already has been forced to pump up sales incentives to attract buyers for the models that weren’t affected by its Jan. 21 recall of 2.3 million vehicles to fix faulty pedals.

Toyota’s sales slid in January after the company was obliged to stop selling models covered by the recall. In a costly move, the company also halted production of the eight models for a week.

Toyota may recoup some of the lost business, estimated at 20,000 vehicle sales in January, after fixing the pedals.

But the damage to its once sterling reputation could enable Toyota’s Japanese rivals and resurgent Detroit automakers to grab some of its U.S. market share over time, Citigroup analyst Itay Michaeli told The Detroit News.

NAGOYA, Japan – Toyota’s fix for the gas pedal problem that led to the recall of millions of cars has not come soon enough to prevent a consumer backlash in the U.S. and elsewhere that is battering its sales, reported The Detroit News.

One of the automaker’s top executives today said the damage from the global recall of nearly 4.5 million vehicles may be greater than previous quality problems because of the massive scale.

“This is unprecedented in having caused this huge problem for customers,” said Shinichi Sasaki, who oversees quality control at the world’s No. 1 automaker.

He said it was too soon to put a number on the ultimate cost of the recall. But Tatsuo Yoshida, an auto analyst at UBS in Tokyo, estimated the recalls are likely to cost about $900 million, and lost sales are already costing Toyota another $155 million a week.

Toyota apologized to its customers Monday and said a piece of steel about the size of a postage stamp will fix the gas pedal problem. Repairs will take about a half-hour and will start in a matter of days, the company said.

The repair involves installing a steel shim a couple of millimeters thick in the pedal assembly, behind the top of the gas pedal, to eliminate the excess friction between two pieces of the accelerator mechanism. In rare cases, Toyota says, that friction can cause the pedal to become stuck in the depressed position.

Toyota insisted the solution, rolled out six days after it temporarily stopped selling some of its top models, has been through rigorous testing and will solve the problem for the life of the car.

After a week in which Toyota drivers said they were worried about the safety of their cars and dealers were frustrated by a lack of information, Toyota said it would work to regain the trust of its customers.

WASHINGTON – Safety advocates say government regulators may take a more urgent and tougher position on recalls, following Toyota’s callback of millions of vehicles, The Detroit News reported.

Automakers have often resisted recalls, acting only when the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is poised to order them. At other times, they have fought them off completely or argued to scale them back.

But after Toyota’s two recalls linked to sudden acceleration — 5.4 million vehicles linked to floor mats and 2.3 million to sticky gas pedals — things may change for good for NHTSA as well as for the automakers.

NHTSA is considering issuing civil penalties in Toyota’s handling of the back-to-back recalls. It also is likely that the agency will act more quickly to enforce future “stop sales,” like the one ordered by Toyota, if automakers don’t have a fix.

“I think that NHTSA has been stung by (the Toyota recalls) and they should be. They have been behind the eight ball and haven’t used the authority given to them,” former NHTSA administrator Joan Claybrook told The Detroit News.

While Toyota maintains it acted promptly, NHTSA may be less willing to accept what automakers say at face value, next time.

If President Obama gets his way, the agency will get a 15 percent increase in the number of administrators, from about 60 now to 68.

Toyota Motor Corp. rejected suggestions Monday that it had ignored or reacted slowly to numerous reports that its vehicles could accelerate uncontrollably, reported The Detroit News.

During a full day of briefings, radio and TV appearances, company officials said the remedies Toyota had outlined, including redesigned gas pedals, will prevent the frightening occurrences that have been linked to several fatal accidents in recent years.

Toyota ruled out an electronic cause for the problem after conducting what it called exhaustive tests. But executives were guarded in assurances the company had identified all potential causes of uncontrolled acceleration.

In the past four months, Toyota has recalled close to 9 million vehicles worldwide to fix defects that could lead to unintended acceleration.

According to U.S. government data, Toyota has generated more complaints about unintended acceleration than any other automaker in recent years, and at least 15 fatalities are linked to the reports.

Questions about the electronic systems crop up because Toyota, like many other automakers, switched to drive-by-wire acceleration. In such a system, pressure applied to the gas pedal actually sends an electronic signal to the throttle.

Toyota says it has carried out extensive tests of its systems in Japan. “The testing that these go under includes every magnetic force, and we have never been able to get our systems to fail through any of the tests that are done on them,” said Bob Waltz, vice president of product quality and service support at Toyota Motor Sales.

Among steps Toyota is taking to reduce the risk of unintended acceleration is installation of a brake override system — a failsafe that treats any pressure on the brake as the dominant command — across all its vehicles.