[pqr]

Is your luxury car, safe?

In the mass market category, 6-airbags are becoming quite common even without Government intervention as of now. But moving higher up in price ladder, it is expected to get even more airbags for occupant protection in premium and luxury car segments. More so, as most of the owners of premium and luxury segment cars are chauffeur driven and prefer to take the back seat more often. But it is quite surprising to see many manufacturers don’t provide rear side airbags in India. Whereas their global products do have it as an option or standard in several countries and considering the fact that in India many of these cars come through CBU or CKD route.

Below is the list of premium and luxury cars sorted according to ex-showroom price to get a clear picture of who is offering what at a given price point. Sad to see that there are more ‘NO’ counts than ‘YES’.



Audi

Kudos! Except for the base variant of A4, all other products come with rear side airbags as standard.



Skoda

Except for the base variant of Octavia, all their CKD products come with rear side airbags. In fact, they equipped Kodiaq and earlier Karoq with 9-airbags.



How come they have goofed up with the Kushaq top-end automatic variant with only 2-airbags at the time of launch? Later they increased the price by ₹ 40,000 and offered 6-airbags. So that additional 4-airbags system just cost ₹ 40,000 to customer. So going by that pricing benchmark, an additional airbag at the rear would cost ₹ 10,000 only, not a big amount by luxury or premium car standards.

Volvo

Always believed that the safety of car occupants wasn’t merely a culture but an obsession at Volvo. But in India, they seem to have watered-down everything. Ideally, all Volvo cars should come equipped with 9-airbags as standard. What a shame Volvo India!



Mercedes-Benz

If one is going to spend above ₹ 1 crore (Ex-showroom), then only Mercedes will offer a rear side airbag, else no chance. Come on Mercedes, your E-Class LWB is rear passenger-centric and owners buy for the back seat experience and it doesn’t have rear side airbags.



In fact, S-Class comes equipped with 10-airbags (as per Autocar review), but the marketing guys at Mercedes forgot to mention the same on their brochure.

[ATTACH=The-Mercedes-Benz-S-Class.pdf]2316238[/ATTACH]

BMW

No matter how much money an Indian customer is ready to deposit in BMW’s India bank account, they will not offer rear side airbag. Guess they take ‘driver’s car’ way too seriously! Too stubborn or ignorant or both?



JLR

Their cars are the most expensive in the Indian market, and 6-airbags is standard. Well both don’t add up quite well!



Toyota

Camry seems to be the exception in Toyota’s stable, 9-airbags come as CKD default and not by design, seems they were not able to delete some features due to international BoM (bill-of-material) and low volume in India. Also, the latest generation Camry is the only CKD car Toyota assembled in India which has a sunroof.

Well, Vellfire should have rear side airbags, but here Toyota is with Mercedes, similar to E-Class LWB.



Others

• Jeep should have tried to match Skoda Kodiaq in the number of airbags count for Meridian
• Volkswagen any thought of joining Audi-Skoda bandwagon with 8-airbags as standard?
• With so much noise around Gloster’s ADAS system, MG forgot to put two additional airbags at the rear!

[CEF_Beasts]

Wow! BMW came out as a B-I-G surprise, no car with rear seat airbags, including the flagship 7er and X7!!

Originally Posted by pqr

No matter how much money an Indian customer is ready to deposit in BMW’s India bank account, they will not offer rear side airbag. Guess they take ‘driver’s car’ way too seriously! Too stubborn or ignorant or both?

In fact BMW doesn’t care about the driver as well! A similar comparison can be made for the Driver Knee Airbag and here again BMW offers it only on their flagship SUV the X7… Other BMWs don’t offer a driver knee airbag which today even several times cheaper cars get (eg: XUV700, Innova Crysta ZX).

Lexus could’ve also been included.

ES, LS, RX and LX get rear side airbags. NX misses out on them.

The LS raises the bar with 14 airbags!!

[Turbanator]

Originally Posted by pqr

it is quite surprising to see many manufacturers don’t provide rear side airbags in India. Whereas their global products do have it as an option or standard in several countries and considering the fact that in India many of these cars come through CBU or CKD route.

Can you post some links showing the differences between EU manufacturers like Volvo, MB and BMW on Indian vs overseas variants? To me, it appears to be a different way of nomenclature.

BMW

No matter how much money an Indian customer is ready to deposit in BMW’s India bank account, they will not offer rear side airbag.

Isn't this same

"Head airbags, front and rear” - these should be standard on all BMWs. These obviously are fixed on the sides and the newer 7 should have one on the belts too just like the S-Class.

Vellfire should have rear side airbags, but here Toyota is with Mercedes, similar to E-Class LWB.

It comes as CBU, I doubt they will produce anything different for our market given the tiny size.

Originally Posted by CEF_Beasts

In fact BMW doesn’t care about the driver as well! A similar comparison can be made for the Driver Knee Airbag and here again BMW offers it only on their flagship SUV the X7

Knee bags can have their disadvantages too. I believe they no longer offer on sedans any longer. Will be interesting to compare with overseas models if you can share some links.

[pqr]

Originally Posted by Turbanator

Isn't this same

"Head airbags, front and rear” - these should be standard on all BMWs. These obviously are fixed on the sides and the newer 7 should have one on the belts too just like the S-Class.

Specification sheet of BMW India is pretty clear. They categorically mentioned that front side airbags are there for driver and co-passenger, and there is no line item for rear side airbags in the specification sheet. Head airbags front and rear - is yet another terminology used by BMW for a more generalized curtain-airbag term used widely across industry, for head protection, and not for torso region - which is taken care by side airbag. Same (6-airbags reference) one can see in Autocar India video review.

Originally Posted by Turbanator

It comes as CBU, I doubt they will produce anything different for our market given the tiny size.

It depends on their software based ordering and production system and how an importer (Indian product planning team) spec the car. Product Managers need to have attention to detail, else, for example, just by oversight they may order cars with heated front seats (without cooling function) for India, which comes as standard in Europe and in some other regions, but can be deleted for overseas markets through their production system.

[Sahil]

Quite an eye opener, thanks for compiling it pqr!

The govt has had mandated two airbags standard and I think they have further increased that. They should mandate the location of the airbags too.
Luxury cars should obviously go above and beyond but shouldn’t trick the customers by mentioning the number of airbags and including smaller ones at the cost of reducing the bigger ones like rear doors.

[androdev]

Rear side airbags are optional equipment in the West and many buyers prefer cars without them as they consider it as a disadvantage when ferrying children in the back or having to accommodate more than two passengers or pets and what not. This influences production forecast/planning and availability of kits to export markets like India. This is also the reason why we get the ridiculous heated seats.

Given that most luxury cars in India are decently loaded configurations and the cost of rear shoulder airbags is not much, I believe this is purely an allotment/availability issue based on buying habits of the customers in the West and not a cost cutting measure.

However, I didn't expect the airbags to be missing in so many cars. Now that I think about it, most buyers in the West don't have adult passengers in the rear seats and so this option is rarely selected.

I remember reading somewhere that Volvo doesn't feel rear shoulder airbags are needed given their improved curtain airbags and strong side impact protection in the chassis.
https://www.swedespeed.com/threads/n...w-xc90.225284/

[ron178]

Very interesting comparison. To be fair using rear torso airbags as the single metric for comparing safety doesn't paint the full picture, but it is one indicator of differences across markets.

Most of these cars are designed for Europe where both the ECE (regulatory) and Euro NCAP (consumer-testing) do side impact tests without adult occupants in the rear. In the US the IIHS places a small teenager in the rear, even there cars have done well without rear torso airbags.

Originally Posted by Sahil

They should mandate the location of the airbags too.

They will. Two frontal + 2 front-seat side thorax airbags + 2 head airbags covering all rows.

Originally Posted by CEF_Beasts

BMW doesn’t care about the driver as well! A similar comparison can be made for the Driver Knee Airbag

Good riddance. BMW's knee airbags have often been problematic in Euro NCAP testing. The IIHS says they're mostly useless anyway.

[SR-71]

On the sedan side the VAG cars seem to do better than all of its European counterparts. While I am not surprised about the BMW & Merc, I was definitely surprised to see the S60 and the expensive S90 figure there. Volvo generally overprovisions their cars on safety aspects, or so I thought!

[Porcupine]

Wow BMW is really surprising. I was just wondering if you had some metrics in mind before choosing the cars listed. Would be interesting to add some other premium vehicles to this such as Lexus, Porsche, Range Rover (Vogue and Sport - the outgoing models just for comparison).

[Raghu M]

Quite surprising (read shocking) actually. And we bash up brands like TATA, M&M that produce the safest cars in the country. My 3OO came with 7 airbags and cost around 13,80,000 on road in Hyd. How come such premium brands find airbags not so necessary?

[ron178]

Guys, this doesn't look like an India-specific issue. I've been checking Euro NCAP's safety spec charts and at least on the face of it it looks like most EU-spec models either have rear body airbags as an option or don't have them at all.

(Solid green = standard, hollow yellow = optional with low sales volume)




As for BMW and the knee airbags, I found this:

However, the driver knee airbag was found not to have deployed correctly. The score for this body area was penalised and BMW were not allowed to demonstrate that structures in the dashboard did not present a risk of injury to occupants of different sizes and to those sitting in different positions. Accordingly, protection of the driver's knee, femur and pelvis body region was rated as weak. From August 2020, the X5 is not equipped with a driver knee airbag.

Originally Posted by Raghu M

My 3OO came with 7 airbags

Still no rear side airbags. 2 front+2 front side thorax+2 curtains+1 knee and I'm not even sure why it had the last one because the standard-fit dual pretensioner (i.e., retractor as well as lap) already improves protection for knees of differently sized or positioned occupants as Mahindra demonstrated using sled tests as part of the GNCAP result.

[pqr]

Here is quantitative analysis.

Originally Posted by androdev

Rear side airbags are optional equipment in the West and many buyers prefer cars without them as they consider it as a disadvantage when ferrying children in the back or having to accommodate more than two passengers or pets and what not.

Absolutely right, western market needs are different from ours. Which is why Mercedes-Benz is selling a long-wheel-base version of the E-Class in China followed by India, and not in Europe.

• They are able to address Chinese or Indian customer’s needs and thus became segment leader in India, then why such omission or oversight?
• In S-Class they already have 10-airbags set up, with that yardstick, why short charge E-Class LWB or GLE 300d customers?
• How come Audi-Skoda can offer 8-airbags as standard on their CKD models and other European manufacturers cannot?

Originally Posted by androdev

This influences production forecast/planning and availability of kits to export markets like India.

Seats and airbags are mostly JIT (just-in-time) parts in the automotive supply chain, and planning is usually accommodative and flexible in nature.

[Indepth]

I will look upon AUDI and SKODA with more respect from now on.BMW guys clearly needs to attend an automotive safety seminar...VOLVO!! Most shocking.

[Turbanator]

I always thought rear side airbags are standard but it turns out most premium cars only have rear curtains as standard (Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise)

99,.. % of our population doesn’t wear a seat belt when sitting in the rear and here we are pointing to EU manufacturers for not providing something which is not even standard or a preferred option in the other parts where most are more conscious about safety and overall traffic hygiene.

This is the picture of the missing bag in question on an Audi Q7, if this makes someone happy (safe), good to pick an Audi (VW)


https://www.audiworld.com/forums/q7-...rbags-2898149/

[khandujam]

Safety kit was one of the most important item in my dealbreaker list when I was in the market last year. And that’s where XC60 scored over X3 and GLC. Indian roads need more of this vs thrills and performance features. While the govt can mandate the warning chirps at 80kmph and 120kmph, nothing saves from idiots behind other wheels except safety kit in your own car.