[ron178]

Originally Posted by kronos596

@ron178 does Basalt come with Seat Belt Pretensioners ? Kinda surprised with driver/front pasenger protection in Orange color. If I recall correctly, e-C3 could have managed atleast 3 stars if it had electronic safety aids and seat belt pretensioners.

To @Citroen India, good job and please continue to improve your products and service based on market feedback. Hope to see more Basalts on the roads soon.

To be clear, the e-C3 was not explicitly marked down for not having pretensioners but because the compression to the passenger chest was high and also a penalty for high loads exerted by the seatbelt. That it was caused by the lack of pretensioners is an educated guess.

Note the e-C3 is probably a much heavier car owing to the e-CMP’s skateboard (AFAIK) battery and structural reinforcements to protect it in a crash especially as it is an FWD EV and there are high-voltage components up front. The weight could have caused higher deceleration but my guess is as good as any.

Brazilian C3 chest is brown after structural modifier and would have been orange with a stable stucture, even without pretensioners.

It is possible to get an orange (even after structure penalty) or yellow chest without pretensioners, the Polo, Jazz and 4th-gen City did it in the previous protocols. But with a new penalty for high seatbelt loads and stricter compression limits it is harder (not impossible).

There is something confusing about the equipment list of the Basalt. The BNCAP report says pretensioners are optional. Yet the rating applies to all variants. And the frontal impact car looks like a top or top-1 variant.

[Gfactor]

Originally Posted by sapien

As a next step in brand building, relaunch a fully loaded, 5 star rated, properly localized, well priced C5 AIRCROSS like SUV competing XUV700, TUCSON, SAFARI, COMPASS. All the Creta/Seltos owners are likely to upgrade in that segment.

Not to forget, ensure top notch service experience!

I think C5 Aircross and Tucson diesel higher end variants are pretty much similarly priced.

[SoumenD]

What’s the bodyshell rating?

[sapien]

Originally Posted by Gfactor

I think C5 Aircross and Tucson diesel higher end variants are pretty much similarly priced.

But it’s not as well equipped as the Tucson or even the Tata twins / XUV700. Also, being a newer unknown brand in the Indian market, by well priced, I meant lower than competition.

[ron178]

Originally Posted by SoumenD

What’s the bodyshell rating?

BNCAP has not mentioned and it is harder to tell from the images than one would think as the heuristic most NCAPs use is that to classify the bodyshell stable if at least two load paths are still capable of reliably carrying loads without permanent deformation.

Many cars (less frequent in modern Asian designs) are designed with a roll-formed tube near the top of the door to transfer forces rearward. If that remains straight and the floor also does not deform, the passenger compartment is considered to have remained stable even if the roof or windscreen pillar bend.

GNCAP secretary general has confirmed this in interviews for Latin NCAP on multiple occasions. 1 2

For example, all of the following passenger compartments have been considered stable:

GNCAP: 2017 Renault Sandero

Good news: “The bodyshell was rated as stable and it was capable of withstanding further loading.”

Latin NCAP: 2014 Toyota Corolla

“La estructura fue considerada estable y capaz de resistir mayores cargas.”

Euro NCAP: 2015 Renault Kadjar and Toyota Avensis


“The passenger compartment of the Kadjar remained stable in the frontal offset test.”
“The passenger compartment of the Avensis remained stable in the frontal offset test.”

Now, with all that evidence, coming to the Basalt, we can clearly see that the roof has failed. That and the above entails that, if the Basalt’s passenger compartment has to have remained stable, both of the following must be true:
- it has a tube in the door that has remained straight
- the floor and door sill have not permanently deformed

Neither of those can be determined plainly from the test videos. For example, for the Brazilian C3 you can’t tell that the door sill broke from the test video. But Latin NCAP showed this in a post-test shot of the car.


Made-in-Brazil Citroën C3 door sill post-test

So in summary, in many cases we cannot simply tell from the test video if the passenger compartment has remained stable or not. We need BNCAP to tell us this.

[tbppjpr]

Originally Posted by ron178

Many cars (less frequent in modern Asian designs) are designed with a roll-formed tube near the top of the door to transfer forces rearward. If that remains straight and the floor also does not deform, the passenger compartment is considered to have remained stable even if the roof or windscreen pillar bend.

GNCAP secretary general has confirmed this in interviews for Latin NCAP on multiple occasions.
...
...
So in summary, in many cases we cannot simply tell from the test video if the passenger compartment has remained stable or not. We need BNCAP to tell us this.

I understand your point, rather I was also aware that sometimes its just the upper 'coverings' which get deformed but the internal structure remains intact. But still the impact is visible all the way from front to back in the whole body of Basalt as well in the examples you shown. Its like the whole body will act as crumple zone if intensity of the impact is higher.

To my eyes and senses, this is starting point of deformation and I am not able to convince myself to trust such cars for highway drives.

Then question arises that from which planet these cars come from:

Here is zero star Indian Polo, a cheap little hatchback which was not eligible to score any star since the base model of it did not have ABS and airbags but bodyshell was found stable:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8jkeKXQW1Y

Same variant of the same car but the manufacturer decide to equip two airbags and ABS in the base variant so managed to score 4 stars:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcDEck0jOGA

Okay, this was a car from decade ago so maybe cars in that era used to have heavy grade materials but then the new generation also performs similar (This result is from Euro NCAP since this generation is not available in India):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZ6FlV5044Y

Does this mean that the crash-test worthiness of these humble little VWs are beyond the testing capabilities of the crash test agencies? Or does it mean that other cars discussed above are just trying to maintain the build quality which is able to score reasonable points anyhow? All this achieved without compromising the Pedestrian safety.

I am asking question to everyone, if you have to pick one car out of these options then which one would you pick if safety is the top priority?

There are many examples with such results but I referred Polo here because I wanted to make a point that achieving such results are possible at such low price point as well.

Another aspect of this fact is that a car with sturdier overall build quality may not meet accident in it's life, and shouldn't be either, but I am sure about one thing that it will last much longer without falling apart while driving in the abusive condition like ours compared to relatively poor built car. Telling this from my own experience of living with one such.

Then comes the cost of repairing. If the car is not total loss then repairing such cars with signs of deformations all over will be more expensive to repair. Here come the insurance companies in the scene.

Who is responsible for the evolution of better car safety standards? Is it government? Is it public? or the manufacturers? None of them, its the insurance companies. They have to pay heavy amount for the causalities as well as for the repairs so they want to minimize the causalities during the road accidents. Indian insurance companies haven't yet reached to the international level but the day they are there, we will also have better cars to choose from.

[ron178]

Originally Posted by tbppjpr

Does this mean that the crash-test worthiness of these humble little VWs are beyond the testing capabilities of the crash test agencies?

It is more complicated than that. There are even more advanced structural designs that omit load paths in the passenger compartment and instead focus on making the crumple zone more homogeneous and efficient by laterally connecting longitudinal members.

Honda pioneered this with their Advanced Compatibility Engineering structures, which is not a case of loadpath "failure" as in the above cases but not even having one of them at all (the tube in the door). Yet they have some very strong results in the NCAPs, even in India.

Despite having fewer load paths in the passenger cell, this kind of a design is in many ways more advanced. First, it means that the main longitudinals are capable of transferring loads to the floor even in crashes where the bumper is not fully aligned with the partner, something that is 'implicit' in the ODB test but not in many real crashes (see). Second, it makes the car less aggressive to an opposing car by not relying on localised stiff members that would punch holes in the firewall (see).

For example, the MQB-A0 in the Polo 6 you have linked is a conventional 3-loadpath design (see); yet if you look at its Euro NCAP MPDB test results, even though it has 5 stars, the stiff structures in its front end are significantly more localised than the dual loadpath Honda HR-V. Both have similar self-protection.


Polo Mk VI facelift (3 load paths but conventional front end)


Honda HR-V (dual load path but homogeneous front end)



For what it's worth, the combination of orange chest & knees with the mapping penalties kept is very common in cases of unstable structure (although not necessary) and even my gut feeling is the Basalt is one of them. But we cannot say anything for sure just because the windscreen pillar has bent.

My point in any case was not to be 'prescriptive' about what is good or bad but to show that it is impossible to say whether BNCAP has applied the penalty for unstable passenger cell to the Basalt or not just based on the film unless they explicitly mention it, because there are many examples to show the passenger cell can "look" stable and actually be penalised or "look" unstable and not be.

In fact the Polo Mk IV is one of them


"The bodyshell was rated as stable and it was capable of withstanding further loadings."


"The structure was able to withstand further loadings"