Car sales growth drives over failure in crash test

Automakers oppose crash test done by NCAP saying these are done at a speed of 64 km per hour

Global NCAP’s safety ratings of five Indian cars made by Maruti Suzuki, Hyundai and M&M made the headlines early this week. Concerned over the negative publicity from the zero rating awarded by the UK-based NGO to best sellers like the Scorpio, Kwid and Celerio, the companies reacted. But, do NCAP ratings affect car sales?

Data shows that the Indian buyers are not guided by the zero ratings issued to cars. In 2014, the outfit had provided a zero rating to Maruti Suzuki’s Alto 800, Hyundai’s i10, Tata’s Nano, Ford’s Figo, and Volkswagen’s Polo. However, sales of these cars, except Hyundai i10 and Volkswagen Polo, have not been affected.

In Hyundai’s case, i10 sales shifted to the Grandi10, launched in September 2013. The decline in Polo sales was linked to the fallout of a global emission fraud. Sales growth of the Alto are flat, while numbers for both the Figo and Nano have grown.

Amit Kaushik, country head (India) at JATO Dynamics, a UK-based automotive research firm, said such ratings could only have some impact in the export market and certain domestic urban markets where buyers were more aware. “There is no impact in the mass market,” he said.

Indian automobile makers have reacted strongly to crash tests conducted by Global NCAP because crashing a car at 64 kmph against a wall in lab conditions is equivalent to a speed of 120 kmph in real life road crash conditions. The frontal offset regulation in Europe and the US is to crash test at 56 kmph. India is also adopting 56 kmph in the norm from 2017.

Global NCAP is a non-profit organisation registered in the UK that aims to encourage worldwide availability of independent consumer information about the safety of motor vehicles.

“Global NCAP has been established to support the goals of the UN Decade of Action for Road Safety, which aims to cut in half the predicted increase in road fatalities by 2020,” says a conference brochure of the Indian Automobile Safety Conference organised by Global NCAP in India early this week.

Global NCAP receives grants from the FIA Foundation and the International Consumer Research and Testing and Road Safety Fund. Max Mosley, chairman of the trustees of Global NCAP, donated £800,000 in eleven months ending January 2013. The UK-based International Consumer Research and Testing, an independent international organisation for consumer research and testing, donated 59,517 pounds Global NCAP. The FIA, which conducts auto sports like Formula One, donated 778,158 pounds. Mosley is the former president of the FIA. Other than funding, NCAP partners component makers, including air bag manufacturers. One such partner is Sweden-headquartered Autoliv, which has about 40 per cent of the global air bag market. Other component makers that partner NCAP are Bosch and Denso. India, the world’s fifth largest car market that produces 3.4 million passenger vehicles a year, does not produce air bags and imports all of them.

Last year, the government notified a rule requiring air bags in all passenger vehicles from October 2017. The rule says any car launched from October 2017 needs to have an air bag to meet new crash test standards.

For existing models, a two-year transition provision has been allowed. Most of the new launches of last year, Creta (Hyundai), S Cross and Baleno (Maruti), Jazz (Honda), Kwid (Renault), Figo and Figo Aspire (Ford) and TUV300 (Mahindra & Mahindra) have the option of air bags. Any increase in air bag use will benefit overseas suppliers.