Teaming with Autoliv, Honda sees promise in next-gen airbag

RAYMOND, Ohio — Can a "passion for destruction" keep Honda passengers safe in a car crash?

Engineer Eric Heitkamp, who says that passion led him to a career running crash tests at Honda, certainly thinks so.

Heitkamp led the development of what the automaker calls a "next generation" passenger-side airbag — created in cooperation with Swedish supplier Autoliv — intended to lower the probability of injury in a wider variety of crashes by securing the passenger's head like a ball in a catcher's mitt and bringing the airbag closer to that passenger.

The technology, which was demonstrated to journalists during a tour of the Honda R&D Americas complex here last week, will debut in Honda Motor Co. vehicles next year. However, the automaker would not disclose which vehicles will be the first to get it.

As opposed to a conventional airbag, which has one inflatable component, Honda's new version consists of:

• A center chamber.
• Two outward-projecting side chambers that create a wide base across the dashboard.
• A "sail panel" that stretches between the two side chambers at their outermost edge. Honda describes it as a catcher's mitt that decelerates the occupant's head while also engaging the side chambers, pulling them inward to cradle and protect the head.

"Looking at the real-world data, we can tell that over 56 percent of these real-world crashes have some level of angled impact. I mean, it's not straight into a wall or to a tree or something," said Heitkamp. "So we recognized that we need a restraint system that can improve at the angle-type collisions."

In 2013, the scientific community developed BrIC, short for brain injury criteria, which measures brain strain caused by rotational velocity. "This is looking at the brain-tissue damage and its cause from rotation of the head itself," Heitkamp said. From BrIC, engineers developed an equation that can be measured with dummies in Honda R&D's lab.

With the new design, "we can better manage lateral forces that are coming into the airbag system," Heitkamp said in a video explaining the technology. "And we're able to provide a better restraining system from the airbag."

Heitkamp said Honda R&D approached Autoliv with the challenge of developing the airbag. The project took four years.

Autoliv, one of the suppliers that Honda turned to for replacement inflators in 2014 in the wake of the Takata crisis, will have the right to make the airbags available to all other automakers once Honda's exclusive right to use them expires. Citing confidentiality, Honda would not say how long that period will be.

Autoliv ranks No. 29 on Automotive News' list of the top 100 global suppliers, with worldwide sales to automakers of $8.68 billion in 2018. The company's Honda business has been one of its noteworthy drivers of growth. In its 2018 annual report, Autoliv said Honda accounted for 8 percent of its global sales that year, compared with 7 percent in 2016. Prior, Honda had been Takata's largest customer.

Honda is still managing the fallout from the Takata crisis, which affected a wide swath of automakers and led to the largest automotive recall in U.S. history. About 12.9 million Honda and Acura vehicles in the U.S. have been subject to recalls related to defective Takata inflators, and Honda has confirmed 14 deaths and more than 200 injuries in the U.S.

During the media tour, Honda representatives made a point of saying that the new Autoliv design, including the propellant, is completely different from what Takata used in defective airbags.