[JithinR]

Originally Posted by Simat

...Yes, I agree with your point that mods cannot be always participating in all the discussions, but this thread is not a joke. Only one mod taking stand against Kia's shameless corner cutting is concerning for team-bhp(kudos to Crazydriver ). When 'premium' brands like hyundai/kia start taking customers for a ride at the cost of their safety, it is a damn serious thing to raise your voice against!

Incase you forgot, you only called out Maruti for it's dumb statement, but never said anything about Kia's crash test. Maruti has always been full of crap, and that statement did not surprise anyone. It was the result of Seltos' crash test that did take everyone by susprise. Quoting your post again for reference

Originally Posted by sodapop

.. but was genuinely curious about the silence from your side, with you being a very active moderator and one of the first people to comment on most threads, it did seem strange not seeing your opinion on such a popular thread.

Originally Posted by vishy76

It is also surprising to see very little moderator activity on this thread. Crazydriver is the only moderator who has posted something in relevance to the KIA fiasco.

Fellow members, we need to remember that this is an enthusiast run forum. There is no one being paid to act as a moderator and pitch in to all discussions 24/7 like Xiaomi/Asus/Samsung etc. community forums.

You are basically looking at a bunch of guys/gals who have normal lives and then go dedicate a portion of it to automobiles. As such, you can't expect mods to comment on every development within a day of it blowing up on social media and Team-BHP.

Me personally, I think it's very reasonable to expect that the reviews for all these cars (not just the KIA Seltos) can be updated so that the crash test ratings are reflected. Also, this has to go to the cons section (not to the 'Smaller but significant' stuff at the bottom of a review). If this can't be done due to some technical limitation let's just change the thread title.

At least we can help those few fortunate souls who have the presence of mind to search '[insert some car name] review' on their google search fields before they make the second most significant purchase of their lives.

[McLaren Rulez]

Originally Posted by RaghavEvoX

For a 9.8 lakh ex-showroom car which includes manufacturing, transport, dealer's margin, PDI costs and a GST of 43% , which translates to less than 6.85 lakh for manufacturing, transport, dealer's margin and the profit. Now I think again and realize that it is not logical to compare Australian and Indian Seltos models.

So I don't want to put the complete blame on Kia. It's our market, policies and perception responsible for this. Hope things change for good in the future.

Your contact in Kia makes an interesting point but I don't think it holds water.

The Seltos sells in a price bracket where customers are not that sensitive to cost - it is, in fact, a fairly price inelastic segment. Moreover, building the same car to Aussie spec will not increase the price by as much as you think. To verify that claim, simply compare a Tiago and an i10. The two fight in the same segment - a much more price sensitive one at that. The i10 might be ahead on features or plastic quality but the competitive difference between the two cars is hardly night and day.

OEMs love to complain about government policies or market maturity but it is perfectly possible to manufacture safe cars in India and still be competitive. The higher the price point, the easier it gets. Not being able to do it at the 10L price point is an indication of staggering incompetence or el cheapo penny pinching mentality. Kia can clarify which of the two is the case.

[nasa_hubble]

Originally Posted by RaghavEvoX

'Strategy is different depending on markets. Segmentation, targeting, pricing and so on... Indian price starts at 9.8Lakh, Australian price starts at 14Lakh. How can both cars be the same logically? That is my personal answer, not official. Price elasticity of demand is fairly high in Indian market compared to others . Indian economy is growing fast. I think Indian government will establish strong safety and environmental law soon. We are prepared for it. By the way, customers have to pay more for it. Indian Government should lower taxes for better products to the end customer'.

Respectfully disagree to what he has replied. Moreover to me this does not look like a personal response, instead a well drafted one.

The counter to all he has said one can simply ask as to how are other manufacturers doing the same at lower cost.

Like you have yourself put it aptly, 'How can a 21 lakh car be less safe than a 5 lakh Tiago ?'

Also, are other manufacturers functioning under different regulations?

[chiefpk]

So basically this thread is literally on fire

And within this fire we have been deviated from what the real motive was. This isn't about our mods not commenting( which however they did) or someone attacking someone or about Tata which have now been introduced here to send Harrier to GNCAP(IMHO, they won't) or about Ford introducing their own better than 5 star safety. This is about Kia Seltos and the double standards of manufacturers (Ahem* Hyundai* Ahem) playing with the lives of Indian customers who are easily befooled just because what safety means to them. Rather what we need to learn is:-

1. Always look for safety of your next car. A proper GNCAP testing of the Indian Variant on sale is necessary.
2. Do not trust on the crash test ratings of another agency (Euro or Asean,etc NCAP) for the authenticity of crash ratings of the model on sale.
3. Always try to opt for safer cars. Each and every segment has something in form of one car or the other.
4. Precise build or superbly engineered terms must not be related to the safety of a car when mentioned in the review. Our Humble and hardworking reviewers can only know about the build and sheet metal quality while reviewing and not the accurate crash results. That job is upto GNCAP, to crash a damn car and give stats about it.

Requesting the Mods again for their inputs regarding the addition of crash test ratings in the official reviews of the car.


IMHO, if the car is tested before the launch, the ratings should be reflected in the positive/negative section as per the result but if it is not tested(which is mostly the case), it should be reflected as a negative about the car till the results are revealed.

Regards,

Pranav

[ram87pune]

Originally Posted by dsr001

Has anyone noticed that Tata is not mentioning 5 star rating of the Nexon, since the past few months atleast. Check the brochure, website, ads. Though they do mention 5 stars for Altroz. Compare also, with XUV300, for which Mahindra boldly proclaims the 5 star NCAP rating. Does this imply that the Nexon being currently sold, does not conform to the 5 star rating that we are usually attributing to it (on this forum atleast)?

This is my first post on the forum, feel free to suggest corrections/edits.

Thanks for pointing this out buddy and welcome to the forum. I was waiting for when someone will point this out.

The Nexon which scored the 5 star rating was the pre facelifted model. The current facelifted model is not a 5 star one unless it is tested by the NCAP and proven so.

This is because the facelifted Nexon has undergone quite a few cosmetic changes like new bumpers, headlights etc. According to my sources even a change of alloy wheel design can affect crash test performance(though to a small degree).

So "maybe" Tata's internal crash testing has not yielded them the desired results and so they are not highlighting the 5 star rating for the facelifted version. If that is not the case what is stopping them from getting the Nexon retested? Same goes for the Nexon EV which has to be tested as an independent model by the NCAP and the ratings of standard Nexon do not apply to the EV.

This by no means is indicative of the fact that the Nexon will score anything less than 5 stars for the facelifted version, but until it is proven so by the NCAP we won't know the answers.

[fhdowntheline]

Kia has cut costs because it CAN do so without affecting product sales prospects in the absence of a regulatory mandate to test at higher standards. The same with all other manufacturers who have and havent tested their respective models. The approach expressed by some on this forum to “vote with our wallets” wont go too far. If it werent for regulation, all our cars would have scored ZERO on the crash tests because the manufacturer would happily sell the base version without airbags.
Hence my only( repeated) point - lets not stop halfway, let us go the whole hog aka other developed countries. I hope people realise that all these cars showing disappointing results are actually compliant to Bharat Safety norms ,whatever they are. Thats the biggest issue in my opinion.

[sou_3749]

Originally Posted by SansGT

This is complete bias. How can you say that Tata/Mahindra cannot match the so called biggies in engineering? Yes, Tata had huge problems with their earlier generation cars, but their modern cars are as good as they can get and are equal if not better than these Korean cars. I owned a Tata Zest for 4 years and it ran impeccably without a single problem. But, still people consider these Indian brands as inferior. Every brand has niggles, but once it comes on a Tata or a Mahindra, it is shown in such a way as if they have made an engineering disaster. Just scan through some ownership pages of other brands and you will find equal amount of issues, but these foreign brands never get the stick in the same way a Tata or Mahindra does. Heck, scan through our forum and you will get posts on innumerable quality issues with Hyundai including the infamous braking issues with Creta/Seltos. I believe from your post that you have never owned a Tata/Mahindra, hence I would humbly request you not question the capabilities of these two brands or consider them inferior to the Japs or Koreans.

I can say that because that's my personal opinion based on my years of experience. Just because you own a 4* car doesn't mean everybody will sing praises about it. How did you conclude that I have negative bias towards Tata/Mahindra? You don't like my point of view on this, I suggest give my comment a pass.

And why you guys are going so personal that you are questioning the sanity of the moderators? Get a life guys and maintain decorum of the forum. As per my limited English knowledge "Moderation" means something else.

It feels like we have judges here announcing verdict

Tell me guys, if BS6 allows Nitrogen Oxide (NOx) Limit 60mg, the manufacturer will limit it close to 60 or should they make it 20 as per the European policy because obviously that's a better rating. In the same line Indian manufacturers follow Indian safety rules. Please understand safety comes at a price. Tata preferred to invest in safety and skip on other(not so important) attributes where as Koreans follow a different approach but both of them doing it within boundaries. As customers, the choice is ours.

Let me give an example from a different domain.
Ever heard about a company called UL, the largest private player to provide safety certification to consumer products. They follow different safety protocols for different countries as per the the local govt laws. Why because law of the land prevails.

Coming back to the subject, if 3* doesn't mean anything, there shouldn't be any intermediate ratings. Either it's 5* or 0*.

At the end of the day, I am as disappointed with the safety ratings as many others here. But that doesn't mean we stop thinking rationally and write anything just for the sake of argument.

[SansGT]

Originally Posted by sou_3749

I can say that because that's my personal opinion based on my years of experience. Just because you own a 4* car doesn't mean everybody will sing praises about it. How did you conclude that I have negative bias towards Tata/Mahindra? You don't like my point of view on this, I suggest give my comment a pass.

Sir, I didn't even quote the safety ratings of Zest in this comment. It was a reply to your particular quote: I don't see myself buying one until they match the biggies in other departments.
You need not sing praises about a car and neither am I expecting you to. But this particular line from your post as well as your earlier posts bring out a simple opinion: a Tata or a Mahindra cannot match the engineering prowess of a foreign rival. This line itself is wrong. This is not a place to float personal opinions but give facts. And the fact of the matter is that these two brands are no lesser in terms of capability to build quality products than any of their competitors.

[tirumalavoleti]

Originally Posted by RaghavEvoX

Like most of you here, I was very disappointed with the safety rating of Seltos more than the other 2 cars.
.
So I don't want to put the complete blame on Kia. It's our market, policies and perception responsible for this. Hope things change for good in the future.

Agree to this. The atrocious ~50% tax (for 4m+ cars) in various forms kills the manufactures and buyers together.

[sou_3749]

Originally Posted by SansGT

Sir, I didn't even quote the safety ratings of Zest in this comment. It was a reply to your particular quote: I don't see myself buying one until they match the biggies in other departments.
You need not sing praises about a car and neither am I expecting you to. But this particular line from your post as well as your earlier posts bring out a simple opinion: a Tata or a Mahindra cannot match the engineering prowess of a foreign rival. This line itself is wrong. This is not a place to float personal opinions but give facts. And the fact of the matter is that these two brands are no lesser in terms of capability to build quality products than any of their competitors.

I guess my comments are not going well with the masses. What's the issue here. Are you unable to digest a logical argument or just trying to prove me wrong?

Request to moderators, if my views are against the guidelines of the forum, please remove them.
I am not commenting anymore in this thread. My apologies in advance.

[TheHelix0202]

Dear mods, I feel this discussion has gone long enough and almost everyone active on the forum has had a say on the matter. It would be prudent to close this thread before everyone flies off the handle and at each other's throats.

[arjab]

Originally Posted by koushikroy1989

But at the same time, confused now thinking about what would be car at this 20l budget. :(

Please help guyss!!!!

The Compass & the Harrier are competent vehicles you may want to check out.

[Jas21]

Just happened to check IndianAutosBlog (self proclaimed auto blogging pioneer), and no news on these tests whatsoever, till now.

[pandatrooper]

Originally Posted by TheHelix0202

Dear mods, I feel this discussion has gone long enough and almost everyone active on the forum has had a say on the matter. It would be prudent to close this thread before everyone flies off the handle and at each other's throats.

My two cents. While I totally agree with all the members here, I cannot imagine the plight a Seltos / i10 Nios owner after going through such negativity after spending hard earned purchase on their vehicle. Seltos might not have fared well in the GNCAP ratings, but there are thousands of other cars in the market that did not even make it to GNCAP. If one strolls across his/her street observing the cars people have, I'm sure more than half of the vehicles might not even have airbags or ABS for that matter .

Moreover, mere three vehicles in the Indian market out of tens and hundreds of vehicle on sale have a perfect five star rating. That's less than around 0.5% [ Maybe even lesser ] of the total market share. Besides, companies like Mahindra flaunts the XUV300 with 5* rating, while their very own hot-seller Scorpio conveys a totally different tale.

Five years ago, nobody cared about NCAP or safety. But, fortunately the concern for safety is slowly catching up amongst prospective Indian Buyers. Even the Government is slowly making some efforts to mitigate the crisis. And that, in my opinion, is a positive sign. At this point of time, all we can hope is both the government and the automobile companies wake up from the slumber and provide safer and better cars for the people of India in the upcoming years.

Peace

[Vid6639]

Wow. 29 pages in 2 days and all the attention is on the Kia. And to top it off I see posts asking why mods are not replying on this thread. lol.

Let me clear that first. All mods have regular day jobs, secondly it's Diwali time so even more busy. C_D probably wasn't as busy. Lastly, none of us own Kia's or are in the market to buy one! Each mod posts in threads they have interest in first. For example you will see Jaggu active in the Thar thread. A mod posting does not put any stamp or special conviction.

When we post we post as members and only if we have something additional to add to the discussion. In this case a tsunami has flown under the bridge.

Now coming to the Seltos rating. Personally I am disappointed as well. Have recommended the Seltos to many and they will not be happy reading this. More over when I went for the official review, I came back and booked one cause I figured it would be the perfect upgrade from the Ecosport. However after booking and waiting I got over the gizmos and doo dads and realized for 100% the price of Ecosport it wasn't a 100% of an upgrade.

My PoV is kind of different. It's sad that Kia got only 3 stars but what can you do about it? The Creta on similar platform and Seltos are the best selling and only options in that segment for mid size crossovers. The other choices are either bigger or much more expensive.

Ford made 300 changes to the Ecosport including structural bodyshell changes for the export Euro spec. This was manufactured in India. However the one sold domestic did not get these 300 upgrades. I doubt many cry hoarse about this now after 5+ years on sale.

No manufacturer is a saint. Tata was accused of adding reinforcements only on driver side to pass NCAP testing since they don't do overlap crash testing on passenger side.

I doubt Kia will do anything about this.

The only thing we can do as Team-BHP members (mods or not) is to spread awareness and when non automobile enthusiasts come to Team-BHPians for advice we can inform them of the Kia safety rating.