[BLACNWYTE]

Originally Posted by QuadraticAmoeba

So Maruti is passing the standard 12th class exam. They are not clearing the more stringent (e.g.) engineering entrance test, but they don't have to. Maruti (and others) seem to be doing the bare minimum as mandated by law, and there is nothing wrong with that from their perspective.

I was thinking about this a bit differently. All tests are the for the same thing, let's take the board exam analogy. There is our norms, then global NCAP and then Euro NCAP. Like 10th boards for State, CBSE and ICSE. Now as per my knowledge ICSE is the toughest and State boards are comparatively easier (not always but generally).
Students who pass this will get into the next level i.e., cars on road. Now depending on the test you have passed you will perform at the next level (general opinion/ odd cases will be there).

Maruti is protecting their USP as a low cost max fuel efficienct car by building cars. It's not like they don't have the know-how to make safer cars. They have a 4* Brezza. It's just that they are compromising on build quality and reinforcements to keep the weight low and FE up. If production cost is an issue then how come TATA is able to sell an entry level Tiago which have a 4* rating at that price.

Truth is that MSIL is so scared of losing their market share to Hyundai-KIA/ TATA if they increase the prices of their cars for the added safety provided. So they are happy selling cars which score the bare minimum marks for passing the lowest set exam and fight tooth an nail if someone calls them out.

These are all just personal opinions and mostly springs from the apathetic stand of the two big car manufacturers (MSIL and HMIL) in India towards their customers' safety.

P. S. - I hope you too had a wonderful festival weekend.

[QuadraticAmoeba]

Originally Posted by BLACNWYTE

I was thinking about this a bit differently.
<snip>
These are all just personal opinion and it mostly springs from the apathetic stand of the two big car manufacturers (MSIL and HMIL) in India towards their customers' safety.

You make some good points. I feel that both Maruti and Hyundai-Kia can make decent safety improvements without impacting their costs too much. While I don't have conclusive evidence for this statement, I do see (as you said) Tata or Mahindra producing safe cars for pretty much the same prices. I do see the same Maruti and Hyundai-Kia producing safer cars elsewhere in the world.

I will amend my statement thus: we need both government regulations and better consumer awareness to make safer cars and safer roads. Hopefully, we can see all this play out sometime soon.

[fhdowntheline]

Actually there is a confusion that creates enough material for both parties to talk.

https://www.carandbike.com/news/maru...sident-2325187

GNCAP spokesperson says that Bharat New Car Assessment program is more closely aligned with GNCAP. And then he further says that Maruti does bare minimum to qualify. So the questions are:
1) Does bare minimum qualification get get zero stars? Its kind of counter intuitive.
2) What is the compliance level ? Is it to "meet" or "exceed" the norms?

One can safely infer that all recent cars introduced in India "meet" the Bharat NCAP norms. And if that is closely aligned with GNCAP, what else is GNCAP trying to do?

[commonman]

We had talked about Maruti's high handedness a lot. If an amendment in law comes to stop selling of crash test failed cars, another amendment will be made, for all these cars be termed quadricycles in the near future and sold in India. Maruti have that much might. Why do you think Maruti is the market leader? They had avoided tests for a long time. There are enough bureaucratic power with them. They will not even show tests for their best selling cars. Our system is compromised. Immediate crash tests for Swift 2018, Dzire 2017, Ertiga 2019, XL6 must be done. They are not cheap cars. Let us make Maruti accountable.

[QuadraticAmoeba]

Originally Posted by fhdowntheline

Actually there is a confusion that creates enough material for both parties to talk.
<snip>
GNCAP spokesperson says that Bharat New Car Assessment program is more closely aligned with GNCAP.

I, too, would like more clarity on this. If the Bharat NCAP equivalent is indeed closely aligned with GNCAP or other international norms, then why don't we see full and detailed reports for every car? Clearly, the GNCAP is not a pass/fail test - they give much more information than that. It would be nice if the Government tests gave us that information too, since the test is compulsory for (almost?) all cars sold in India.

My fear is that the Government regulations are "not quite updated yet", and will take some time to roll out.

[ron178]

Yawn. Maruti still doesn't want to do much more than they have to, repeats already obvious facts:

Maruti meeting all safety regulations in India: CEO - The Hindu

Global NCAP just an organisation, not a regulator: Kenichi Ayukawa
Country’s largest passenger vehicles maker Maruti Suzuki India (MSIL) on Wednesday said the company meets all the safety norms under the Indian regulations and does not have to meet the requirements of independent organisations like Global New Car Assessment Programme (NCAP).

“Global NCAP is an organisation and not a regulator...The Indian regulations and the European regulations are exactly the same in frontal offset norm, side impact norm and pedestrian impact norm. India is at par with Europe in crash test norms and we are already there (meet the norms),” Kenichi Ayukawa, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, MSIL, said on the sidelines of the new Baleno launch.

On competitors like Tata Motors and Mahindra & Mahindra getting four/five-star ratings in crash tests at Global NCAP, Ayukawa said the market is open and the customer decides at the end what to buy.

The point is that nothing they've said is wrong, and they're not really doing anything wrong. Yes, India has applied ECE-equivalent crash tests but then how is it that Suzuki is willing to do much better than just passing ECE tests in Europe? They've done pretty well in Euro NCAP in the past, and it was completely up to them whether to choose to do it or not. How is it that when it comes to India the regulations (which, as they point out, are now similar to Europe's) suddenly become enough?

I'm not saying they're doing anything wrong, they're just showing a lack of ambition that is disappointing for a market leader. This is not something they have to do, it's something they should want to do.

They could learn a thing or two from their partner Toyota on how to respond neutrally to a low NCAP rating (7:31):

https://youtu.be/OfepNQOIKW0?t=451

[ron178]

Posting here because it would be off-topic on the other thread.

Originally Posted by sbm

If yes, then are we wrongly focused on GNCAP while all these cars are safe according to Indian/European norms?

He's not wrong about that, India since 2019 has applied regulations very similar to the ECE's. But the ECE tests are a minimum regulatory standard that every car legally has to pass during homologation to be legal to sell. Speeds are lower, dummy positioning is advantageous, injury criteria are weak (you only have to avoid life-threatening injury and nothing more).

To put it in a nutshell, even if the safety regulations are the same, the cars' safety performance is definitely not.

NCAP tests are more realistic, they're higher-speed, the injury measures are much more robust and they're not just pass/fail, they're graded on a scale, so there's room to apply penalties for things that are not seen in dummy readings but could affect real-world crashes. Of course, the more advanced the testing gets, the more expensive the car gets initially (it takes some time to absorb costs and let them become affordable enough for the lower segments) which is why they're not mandatory. They're consumer ratings, not a regulatory standard, for example, you can legally sell a zero star Euro NCAP car in Europe as long as it meets ECE regulations.

My point is that Suzuki will never willingly sell a new zero star Euro NCAP car in Europe or a zero star JNCAP car in Japan (even keeping in mind how much more demanding they are than Global NCAP) and they're not going to make excuses that they don't have to do it, though that statement is just as true in Europe as it is in India. The new Suzuki S-Cross is probably undergoing Euro NCAP testing right now and even without a rating I'm almost sure it's not going to be a zero or a one or a two because they know it would be a disaster. I'm betting on four or five.

The point is not that the rating itself (in India) is very good, IMO the current Global NCAP ratings are important but not worth using as an overall safety rating, but if Maruti don't want to do well in just a single test that doesn't cost much (per car) in production to develop for, then fat chance they'll do it when the tests evolve and include more and more relevant stuff. It's one thing to say that safer cars alone are not enough for road safety but Bhargava lives in a different century where cars don't make a difference to road safety.

The excuse of purchase cost or weight or low fuel economy is irrelevant (eg. Punch, Etios, Amaze, Magnite, Mazda2) because the little profit they make (per car) by using inferior spot welds etc. is usually too small to pass on to the consumer, but with a large sales volume they'll make a profit, plus it saves maintenance costs on production equipment (welding, hot-stamping etc). In India, Maruti-Suzuki and Hyundai are now the only ones who are still not on board with the idea of feeling the need to achieve good results, if not using them as a sales argument. Tata, Mahindra - check. VW - check. Honda, Toyota (*) - check. Heck, lately, even Nissan and Renault.

(*at least I'm confident Toyota won't make statements like this even if they do badly, like they responded elegantly to the Yaris' poor Latin NCAP result)