[ajaiD]

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[shortbread]

Originally Posted by romeomidhun

And he is not completely off the mark. There are crores of people riding 2 wheelers in India who may be dreaming of a car for a safer journey with 4 wheels vs 2 wheels, free of rain, sun, dust and smoke. Even then, there is no justification for providing unsafe cars higher up in the range.

Your statement is correct when a consumer is looking to buy the 800, stepping upto his first car! I completely agree.

But when customers who spend more than 6-7 lacs on a Swift or Dzire, get a 2 star car then this excuse falls apart. It's not affordability that worries Mr Bhargava but it's his company's margins.

That said, Maruti's business model is the successful one, make them cheap, sell them cheap and the Indian consumers lap it up. Backed by a wide and efficient after sales network, they dominate the Indian market. Lack of safety will not bother Maruti Suzuki.

If it's safer cars that India wants then it's the buyer that needs to re-think his behaviour, because Maruti isn't going to change a winning formula.

[Reinhard]

Personally I don't blame MSIL for making light weight mileage & profit oriented cars in India. They aren't really cheating anyone at all. The light build is visible for each customer to see.

If the customers take a calculated decision to buy a Maruti Suzuki, MSIL isn't at fault at all. Them selling the car is alright. The cars selling in the numbers that they are selling, is the problem. And the blame squarely rests on the consumers for picking money over life. As long as there are buyers, sellers will make profit making products! Who knows, perhaps other car makers picked up safety as a USP since nothing else they did could challenge MSIL in market share. It might well have been their last choice too! Safety is their invisibility cloak to cover a lot of short comings in perception compared to MSIL. Nobody is a saint in business. Its all dirty.

Even I drive a Maruti Alto. I find that quite a good car for the specific needs for which I use it. I drive it exactly as a replacement for my family's scooter after I was blessed with a kid. Within city confines. Where nothing can reach higher than 30-40 kmph at most. As long as cars of this type are used for such purposes, its okay IMO.

[ajaiD]

In Maruti cars the profit margin is quite thick. My neighbor works for a Maruti spares factory "3rd Party GMA" and according to him these Genuine Maruti parts are made on a high profit and most of the profit is Maruti's.

Retool is also not done by Maruti which is opposite to TATA

[saket77]

Originally Posted by Storm2.0

RC Bhargava's statement saying making safe cars is costly doesn't make any sense. If that's the case then how did TATA and Mahindra manage to do it without charging too much from the customers.

That is true. It is not that Tiago is an expensive car. If Tata can do it in this price bracket, Maruti can easily do it too.

Originally Posted by Storm2.0

And Indian customers are not dumb they are smart and very demanding. They want everything at the best price. So if the safety aspect catches their attention, Maruti and others please start preparing your coffins.

Don't agree with the crux of this statement. Yes, Indians will demand everything with as little the budget be (in fact who wouldn't?), but do you really think that Maruti will sit back and watch the game from outside? Or they don't have the technical prowess to make a 5* rated car?

Maruti has been a very conservative company throughout. With time, it has even become more conservative in my opinion. Back in the 90s when they literally had zero competition, they had cars like Zen, Esteem, Baleno, Gypsy in their line up which were really an enthusiastic driver's car. That changed with competition coming in and Maruti was happy catering to the masses as they topped the sales chart. Even when emission norms set in by the year 2000, they weren't the first to get MPFI systems in place. Even Hyundai (Santro) was upgraded before Maruti could breathe. Another competitor back then, the Daewoo Matiz was probably already brought in India in its MPFI avatar. But when Maruti upgraded its fleet, it was more of a severe punch in the jaw of the competitors. While Maruti could have easily upgraded to just MPFI system, it also upgraded the head of all cars to introduce 4V per cylinder tech which meant that their cars also gained more in terms of performance by breathing better than just complying to the norms. (Matiz had 2V while Santro had 3V per cylinder)

One of Maruti's strategy is to price the car cheap enough. esp to cater to the first time buyers. Once they get the taste of reliability and ASC, those first time buyers are again more likely to go with another Maruti while upgrading.

So you see, they can be conservative but not lenient. Brezza has already scored 4 stars. I am sure next line of Maruti models will be 4-5 stars. Once they see the buyers start warming up to the idea of having safer cars, one will find them in equation before they realize.

[Dieselritzer]

What if something dashes the car at high speeds? What if a huge pillar or a bill board falls on the car like how it did on a Nexon and folks walked out unscratched. May you and family always stay safe, but to drive a zero rated car at a certain speed and assume that it won't matter is a mistake.

Originally Posted by Reinhard

Personally I don't blame MSIL for making light weight mileage & profit oriented cars in India. They aren't really cheating anyone at all. The light build is visible for each customer to see.

If the customers take a calculated decision to buy a Maruti Suzuki, MSIL isn't at fault at all. Them selling the car is alright. The cars selling in the numbers that they are selling, is the problem. And the blame squarely rests on the consumers for picking money over life. As long as there are buyers, sellers will make profit making products! Who knows, perhaps other car makers picked up safety as a USP since nothing else they did could challenge MSIL in market share. It might well have been their last choice too! Safety is their invisibility cloak to cover a lot of short comings in perception compared to MSIL. Nobody is a saint in business. Its all dirty.

Even I drive a Maruti Alto. I find that quite a good car for the specific needs for which I use it. I drive it exactly as a replacement for my family's scooter after I was blessed with a kid. Within city confines. Where nothing can reach higher than 30-40 kmph at most. As long as cars of this type are used for such purposes, its okay IMO.

[Reinhard]

Originally Posted by Dieselritzer

What if something dashes the car at high speeds? What if a huge pillar or a bill board falls on the car like how it did on a Nexon and folks walked out unscratched. May you and family always stay safe, but to drive a zero rated car at a certain speed and assume that it won't matter is a mistake.

I was giving a perspective. Put a scooter in the same situation compared to an Alto. Not everyone can afford a car with high safety rating.

I'm not talking of people buying a 10 lakh ruppees worth tin can. I'm talking of people who can only afford a basic Alto as an upgrade from a scooter or bike. For that group - its either 2 wheels or an Alto. Simple as that.
Possibilities are endless. When someone's number is up - even a Nexon can't save them. Like I said - I take the Alto exactly at places where I know its safe enough. Anywhere else - I take my tank.

[saket77]

Originally Posted by Reinhard

Possibilities are endless. When someone's number is up - even a Nexon can't save them. Like I said - I take the Alto exactly at places where I know its safe enough. Anywhere else - I take my tank.

You yourself drive a Nexon; dont you?

[Reinhard]

Originally Posted by saket77

You yourself drive a Nexon; dont you?

Yes. And a rock solid X1 based Vista before that. Anywhere other than vaccination, movie, school or grocery shopping (all of which are <3km in dense urbanization) - its the Tank always. Since a decade.

Like I said - owners should know the limits of their cars & stay within them. GNCAP ratings are an assisting indicator. 0 stars don't mean everyone will die on ignition. And 5 stars don't mean people are invincible. When people choose wisely for specific purposes rather than blindly for brand- MSIL's share will start dropping. That will be the key contributor to them paying attention to safety. Money makes a difference.

[romeomidhun]

Originally Posted by Dieselritzer

What if something dashes the car at high speeds? What if a huge pillar or a bill board falls on the car...

What if a land mine blasts under your car? What if an aeroplane crashes on top of your tank? Will any airbag / ABS help?

The risks are many. Ideal solution will be a "best possible" one. It differs from person to person.

[FrodoOfTheShire]

Originally Posted by Iyencar

The mindset seems to be "apne ko kahaan gaadi thokna hai"/it'll never happen to us.

The fact is that safety features rarely come into play in day to day life, those are almost invisible. Even electronic passive safety features like TCS, EBD etc are invisible to most drivers when those features are doing their work properly. Only during serious accidents do these features come to light, those who survive become safety concious, or if the safety features don't work when needed then they are highlighted. These are not like fancy features like touchscreen, voice control or sunroof which can be flaunted before friends and relatives.

Originally Posted by shivamk11

CEO of GNCAP was present at the launch of Altroz it seems. Here is an interview with him and CTO of Tata Motors. Seems like a very close partnership as Tata is more willing to provide their cars for the tests.

I had read that GNCAP selects cars randomly to test, and those test cars are bought anonymously from showrooms to avoid special strengthening by manufacturers. Isn't that the case?

Originally Posted by TROOPER

As far as Maruti is concerned, well, they should consider selling every car in their line up with Coca-Cola decals. They're equally responsible in nudging Indians to be overly mileage conscious. Being the market leader, they should have started what Tata is doing now long ago.

Aren't we putting too much faith into a profit driven company? Maruti has absolutely no obligation other than achieving the bare minimum legal standards set by a particular country.

Originally Posted by CrAzY dRiVeR

A good marketing campaign can actually make a difference. The focus has to be on the emotion of making it safely back home, rather than the number of stars achieved by the products.

Very true. I my personal observation, I have seen people equating safety to the number of airbags present. And even those people are rare. Most don't even bother fastening seatbelts, for such people no amount of safety features can save them!

[TROOPER]

Aren't we putting too much faith into a profit driven company? Maruti has absolutely no obligation other than achieving the bare minimum legal standards set by a particular country.

Of course they've got no obligation. So did the gentleman from Volvo, Mr.Nils Bohlin didn't have any obligation to develop the modern 3 point seat belt. It's the thought that matters.

That's why I mentioned 'Maruti being the market leader in my post'.

As a manufacturer, if Maruti really cared about safety, they would have done it. And being the market leader, others would have followed suit.

Currently, Tata didn't have any obligation either. But they took the onus of developing safe cars. With no guarantee whether the market would pick them up or not. So it's a question of interest or not. It's your job to see to it that you make the necessary developments and see to it that they're profitable.

And for all the defence Maruti is getting here, do you mean to say that they would have made losses if they had developed safer cars? They would have sold way more IMO.

[FrodoOfTheShire]

Originally Posted by TROOPER

And for all the defence Maruti is getting here, do you mean to say that they would have made losses if they had developed safer cars? They would have sold way more IMO.

Take it easy buddy! Not defending Maruti in the slightest. All I am saying is that we seem to be expecting Maruti to take responsibility of its market leader position and give India (it's largest market) the cars that we deserve. But Maruti being a profit driven company at the end of the day, seeks only to maximize its numbers by giving us unsafe cars. But the fact is that Indians are lapping up those offerings with zero concerns about their own safety. So why would Maruti feel the need to change its winning formula? Only when Indians start prioritising safety and buy safer cars, more and more manufacturers would be forced to improve the safety of their products.

And lets be practical for a moment here. It's only here in this forum that we BHPians are shouting about safety and congratulating Tata and Mahindra for their efforts. Unfortunately the outside world doesn't care. Our nearest Tata motors dealer has been showcasing the Altroz in our office premises for the last 3 days. General consensus that I hear from my non-auto-enthusiast colleagues are that it's better to buy a Baleno or i20 at that price point!

[dark.knight]

I'm stepping right on a landmine here since there are some aggressively passionate opinions on both ends.. but why not.

Frankly I'm getting a wee bit sick of reading the letters NCAP, with a few more letters placed before them based on location of testing. I feel NCAP is the safety equivalent of JD Power Ownership Index - gets incredibly irritating after a point, specially when they have holes in their procedures.

Let's just test every single car sold here, and leave it to people to decide what they want to buy, whether it's a 5 Star Tata/Mahindra or a 0 Star Maruti (I'm personally not a fan of any of those brands anyway, but why judge others choices?). I also know for a fact that their Polo crash test is terribly outdated for today's time since 2 airbags are standard today, and they gave zero stars to Fiat Punto which has real life stories of keeping occupants safe in the worst of accidents.

Either publish all the latest 2020 model tests of all brands within the same quarter, or stop comparing new with old. Also there should be no judgment of people buying what they like, irrespective of safety ratings.

In case it is felt that I'm tilting on any side in particular, I'm not, I myself bought what I feel is a safe car for my budget, but in any segment or any model, there are always safer cars and less safer cars in comparison. To repeat, I'm sick of NCAP, though safety is always a good first factor when deciding on any car, their tests worldwide and since inception, has had gaping holes because of ever changing parameters (which misleads other developing countries not getting such cars) and different parameters per country (again leading to misleading opinions) and their former habit of choosing a base variant to flat declare safety rankings all the way across to the top variant.

[iamahunter]

India is a huge country and doesn't come in with sparse population. Public is available in abundance with us. Sadly, for most of us, a car is still a luxury.
The car market in India has started rising recently. In the year 2000, my building had 20 parking slots and 2 cars(ample amount of space to play), Now it still has 20 parking slots but 40 cars( space not needed, children play on mobile now). Scenario has changed rapidly.

My father brought his first car when he was about 50. Now in his 60's, and we recently brought our 4th car (sold 2 cars).

You get the drift, right?

On seeing the Altroz 5 stars on the news paper, my neighbor (a retired banker) asked me what these ratings mean; and if they are similar to the stars we see on AC's and Refrigerators.

So coming back to the topic on car safety, we are a young car market and would take a while to come upto global standards. But given the pace that we are making progress, I think it would be very soon.