[adityagurjar]

In an ideal world the goverment should mandate these crash tests but it's also equaly important to communicate the results to the buyers.

One way of doing that could be to make it mandatory for OEMs to indicate the crash ratings on the cars, something similar to what you see on electrical appliances.

This because the problem with a mass market buyer isn't that they don't want safe cars. The problem is that there just isn't any conversation about it or any parameter using which anyone with not so great knowledge of cars can understand what they're getting into. A mass market buyer wouldn't want to understand how a Jeep or a Tata has a better safety kit, its just too technical and uninteresting for them. Because let's face it, people in India are not usually serious about the things they can see in visual (Corona.. ahemmm) vs the things they can (sunroof, 10 inch touchscreens).

So using these stickers would make it much more easier for people to consciously avoid cars with poor safety ratings and it'll also shame the OEMs who aren't at all worried about passenger safety.

[shortbread]

Originally Posted by Red Liner

https://Youtu.be/w3sGkP8HeBY

Once you understand the intended use of this car and drive accordingly, its okay.

This car is primarily a 4*4 activity vehicle to be used in the mountains or the cities and not primarily for cross country highway runs to beat land speed records......

I will buy the jimny even if it comes with zero crash test rating. My intended use will be 100% what the vehicle designers envisioned the car to be.

If having doubtful handling at 78km/h is what beating land speed records mean to you, then the whole question of having half a brain answers itself! Plus if a Jimny with zero stars is what one seeks, just buy a Gypsy and set the saving aside for another expense, eg. a life insurance policy!

[Jas21]

By now most of the forum members must be aware that these days most Manufacturers have big social media strategies/lobbies (especially the new one's). You would have seen an explosion of Auto review channels on Youtube. The Social Media Influencers. Of course there is Money involved.

Before asking any of such "influencers" about the Safety aspects of a car and "build quality" or a car recommendation in general, one should ask them that have they put their money where their mouth is?

I have seen many "influencers" go gaga specifically on Hyundai/Kia these days, and they themselves own (or have owned/or even planning to own) all competition cars. If you come across such recommenders, No matter how "respected" or old those names are in the Industry, avoid them like a plague! Reviews be damned!

[shortbread]

Originally Posted by Shashwat.75

This bias was more or less expected from her given that she owns a Seltos herself ( she mentioned it in the Autocar' s comparison video of Seltos and Creta.)

Aaah....didn't know that.

I presume (with no evidence) that the Seltos must have come with a chunky discount. Now one understands the reasons for Renuka Kirplani fighting for the Seltos against 'keyboard warriors'!

[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.

[Lowflyer23]

To conclude my views after going through each and every post on this thread, I would say that thankfully this has opened the eyes of a lot of people and thrown some light on the legitimacy of so called unbiased media houses and individuals. Yes I know the sad truth is this won't affect the average buyer and unsafe vehicles will continue topping sales charts but at least some people will think twice before signing on the dotted line and will put their money where they get proper ROI.

[Simat]

Originally Posted by GTO

What connection? What the heck are you implying? When Mods post, we do as regular members. Do you want all moderators to come and make a token post?

He never made any connections, you are assuming it yourself. 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! Hyundai cars have always been praised for their superior part quality when compared to the competition(which is nothing but shinier plastic), especially on teambhp, and so has been the case with Kia. The issue of brake failure in seltos and now this crash test result is not helping the matters.

And yes, just FYI, I did post earlier on this thread.

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 GTO

As if the crash test rating wasn't bad enough, Maruti's response is even worse

[shortbread]

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.

Good observation dsr001. They did mention it in their November press release, https://www.tatamotors.com/press/tat...tar-rated-car/

However, I believe the blanket statement does not apply to the Nexon range anymore because the new Nexon EV has not attained a NCAP star rating! Tata Motors confirmed the EV variant has been crash tested by the company at its own facilities but not NCAP.

[QuadraticAmoeba]

Personally, my thoughts on this topic are a bit mixed.

On the one hand, safety is very important. On the other hand, there are many aspects to buying a car (cost, sales experience, after-sales service, etc.) and all of these matter when we decide on what could be (usually) an important and expensive purchase. Like many things in life, there is a trade-off here.

Most Indian car consumers do not consider safety to be the most important aspect (look at the safety record of all the top-selling cars). Manufacturers ultimately have to cater to their customers, if they want to stay in business. This leads to their priorities also being not necessarily focussed on safety. The only way out of this impasse is for our Government to step in and specify higher safety standards. I don't know how to reach out to the concerned authorities (or even who they are). If something like a petition or a signature campaign can help, I would be happy to support it.

I am not surprised at the test results for i10 and S-Presso. The Seltos results are disappointing (for me) because I thought they would be better. I had booked a Seltos and almost bought one. One of the reasons I liked it was that it had a high crash rating internationally. The lockdown and other stuff intervened and I ended up not buying one. Oh well. I hope the car I am in the process of buying has a better safety rating.

The question I had was: are there updates that Kia can do to the Seltos to add some more stars? I read that that Tata cars went through a couple of iterations before they got their current excellent safety records. If so, it would be nice to see a safer Seltos (and probably Creta) in 2021 or whenever the next model is out. This is, quite possibly, wishful thinking on my part.

[SansGT]

Originally Posted by sou_3749

I am extremely happy that Tata/Mahindra (my fav Nexon) have taken the safety aspect to another level, but I don't see myself buying one until they match the biggies in other departments.

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.

Originally Posted by vishy76

The best for the last. A journalist as well known as Renuka Kirplani posting such irrelevant and logic defying replies:

Originally Posted by CEF_Beasts

I always looked upon Renuka Kirpalani as an expert and knowledgeable person but yesterday after reading what she had written about keyboard warriors defaming the Seltos I lost it! You can find my comments here! The most illogical things were being said in the comments section.

She owns a Seltos herself and she proudly mentioned that in one of her reviews (I believe the review of Sonet).

[sodapop]

First of all, I'd like to say that this is simply absurd. Never expected this from Kia considering their products, however now that I recall, Hyundai-Kia have never been the most transparent or honest of OEMs. They have always been involved in shady stuff, some of which includes the power steering failure which many faced without a solution or even an acknowledgement by Hyundai, the mysterious brake failure issues in the first gen creta as well as the new Creta and Seltos which has again recieved no acknowledgement and very silent treatment. Also if I recall correctly, there was a huge controversy during the development of the Seltos when few select journos were allowed to have a preview and even drive the car inside the premises of Kia while others did not get a chance to. I am not feeling well about the ethical practices of this group. For sure, I am not recommending cars of this brand to anybody else in the future. These practices are a far cry from their initial days on our soil.


Also, I strongly feel that the ball is now in the government's court. It's high time a proper safety standard is set for selling cars in India. I mean if uncensored OTT platforms are a "threat" to the people and culture, why aren't unsafe cars a "threat" to people's lives as well?

Originally Posted by GTO

What connection? What the heck are you implying? When Mods post, we do as regular members. Do you want all moderators to come and make a token post?

And yes, just FYI, I did post earlier on this thread.

It would be great to apply some common sense before posting just about anything. Don't give in to any crazy stories, theories and conspiracies cooking in your mind.

Sir, I would kindly request you to not make personal attacks on anybody, just like others members shouldn't be. As for the topic at hand, I don't think fellow BHPian vishy76 meant to offend you this way 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.

Although, do take this in good taste, I reiterate that I am not trying to offend anybody

Originally Posted by CEF_Beasts

I always looked upon Renuka Kirpalani as an expert and knowledgeable person but yesterday after reading what she had written about keyboard warriors defaming the Seltos I lost it! You can find my comments here! The most illogical things were being said in the comments section.

This came as a surprise to me too! Previously I did not think of her as the best auto journalist either but this is a new low for me too!

[RaghavEvoX]

Like most of you here, I was very disappointed with the safety rating of Seltos more than the other 2 cars. The inherent question came to me also 'How can a 21 lakh car be less safe than a 5 lakh Tiago ?'. I have made up my mind that Koreans are making a fool of us Indians and regretted the decision of advising a close family member to buy the Kia Seltos DCT (Good he didn't listen to me and bought a Jeep Compass).

After that I sent a message to a friend(with the team-bhp link) who is working in the Kia Motors India in a senior position. I questioned him why the Indian and Australian markets are treated differently for the same car. Below is his response in his personal capacity.

'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'.

After his response, I decided to think about this deeply without any pre conceived bias. First thing is, most of the people telling that it is a 21 lakh car. Let's get the facts right. This is the top-end on-road pricing. The base model of the Seltos starts at 9.8 lakh ex-showroom price. Be it any car, the base model and the top end differs only in the features and not the structure and chassis. You pay more for the sunroof , Bose speakers, air purifiers, ventilated seats, touch screen with android and carplay, etc.etc.


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.
(refer https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/india...arges-etc.html (Indian Car "On-Road Pricing" explained : Ex-showroom prices, taxes, registration charges, etc)) . Now I think again and realize that it is not logical to compare Australian and Indian Seltos models. Also it is not right to compare a small hatchback like Tiago with Seltos. If Harrier and Seltos are compared, that would make sense to me now. (It would be great if TATA send a Harrier for the GNCAP test now and get a 4 plus rating and flaunt it in their ads).

In reality, if we see most of the reviews by big media houses or even independent media, they tell that Seltos is a feature packed and modern car and at the same time they claim Jeep compass is a pricey option and also lacks modern features(read as gimmicks). They also put a big question mark in the end by claiming 'service is a hit or a miss' and 'reliability unknown'.

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.

[HR 16]

Seems like Hyundai/Kia has asked YouTubers and influencers to downplay these scores by either saying that 2-3 stars are not bad but average or outright saying that the GNCAP testing method has some faults in it. This way of handling things is outright saying that we take the consumers here for granted and we trust the people of India in their ability to not take their own safety seriously.

One such video:

CarAndBike

Here the anchor keeps on saying that this kind of score is not bad and can be increased by just doing some minor changes. Hats off to his confidence.

PS: I think Maruti will be having a comparatively easier time with this, not that they seemed to ever care, but Kia has overshadowed them.

[ssenhyd]

Originally Posted by hummer

I almost fell off the chair reading this!!

Looks could be really deceiving!!



Should the GNCAP ratings be published before sale of a car? Shouldn't that be top criteria to buy a car?

I am sure this news doesn't deter we Indians, we just need glamorous interiors and sunroofs, because we don't crash.

<sarcasm start>GNCAP rating (typical Indian buyer)? What is that? Does the car have ambient lighting that changes color with speed (yes) good buy
Does it have wrap around sun moon roof through which my child can prank around unsafely and dangerously while the vehicle is moving (yes) good buy
Does it have that pricey showy feature (good)..
When can I buy this car <sarcasm end>

[RoadMonkey]

Originally Posted by Shashwat.75

This bias was more or less expected from her given that she owns a Seltos herself ( she mentioned it in the Autocar' s comparison video of Seltos and Creta.)

Be that as it may, she's a professional car journalist, who, in the course of what amounts to her work, should dissociate herself from personal favourites and other sort of biases. Besides, one should not try to convince themselves of the safety of a vehicle by jumping through logical hoops, it can lead to fatal mishaps.

As for the extra airbags and SOS features, I'll quote a line from VW crash report. "The bodyshell was rated as stable and it can withstand further loading which is a critical baseline to add airbags"

So her lamenting people for not choosing the top-end safety features is a bit disingenuous.