of inflators being recalled is over 100 million.

Takata’s penalty is small compared with the one imposed on Volkswagen, which must buy back cars and pay up to $21 billion in penalties and compensation to owners over its emissions-cheating scandal.

Karl Brauer, executive publisher of Kelley Blue Book, said authorities may have kept the penalty manageable so Takata could stay in business and continue to carry out the giant recall.

“My sense is there has been more kid-gloves treatment of Tataka simply because destroying them makes the problem much worse,” Brauer said.

Takata, which also makes seat belts, has racked up two straight years of losses over the recalls but said it hopes to start turning a profit again this fiscal year.

Meanwhile, plaintiffs in dozens of lawsuits over the defect charged in court papers filed Monday in Miami that Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Ford and BMW had independent knowledge that Takata’s air bags were unsafe before putting them in millions of vehicles.

After an inflator ruptured in 2009, one of the auto companies described the problem as “one in which a passenger protection device was transformed into a killing weapon,” the court filing said. The company was not identified in the document.

The filing marks the broadest allegation yet that automakers knowingly put their customers in danger.

“The automotive defendants were aware that rupture after rupture, both during testing and in the field, confirmed how dangerous and defective Takata’s air bags were,” the plaintiffs’ attorneys said.

The auto companies have asserted that they were deceived by Takata and shouldn’t be held liable.

In fact, in Takata’s plea agreement, the Justice Department says Takata got the car companies to keep buying its inflators “through submission of false and fraudulent reports and other information that concealed the true and accurate test results.”

The plaintiffs are suing not only over the deaths and injuries but over what they say is the vehicles’ loss in value because of the defect.