How Much More Expensive Will Cars Become With New Safety Norms?

All cars will have to come with additional safety kit from April 2019, leading to an increase in prices.

All cars will have to come with a driver airbag as mandatory, with passenger airbags optional.

(Photo: Honda India)

The year 2019 will see all cars in India having to comply with new Automotive Industry Standard (AIS 145) norms set out by the Indian government. These standards have been brought about with a target to reduce the number of road accident deaths in India by 50 percent in three years.

To achieve this, all cars will have to come with some mandatory fitments. Cars will have to be fitted with at least a driver airbag if not two or more airbags to reduce incidence of death or injury in a frontal collision.

All cars will come with ABS (anti-lock braking system) to prevent skidding on hard braking, allowing the driver some degree of control in an emergency. Cars will also be equipped with reverse parking sensors to warn of any obstacle behind it, as there have been incidences of children being run over by reversing cars.

To prevent speeding all cars will have a speed warning beep at 80 kmph and a continuous warning beep at 120 kmph. Commercial vehicles will be restricted to 80 kmph only. Also seat belt reminders will be mandatory on all vehicles.

These rules kicked in this month – April 2019. The question is, how much more expensive will this make cars?

How Much Will Prices Increase?

The increase in cost may or may not be significant depending on the car model. Some car makers will have to completely redesign their vehicles, because in addition to these safety devices, cars will also have to pass Bharat New Car Assessment Program (BNCAP) crash tests from October 2019.

Just the addition of a single airbag, ABS, parking sensors, seatbelt and speed warnings isn’t that expensive it turns out. The new Maruti Suzuki Alto that was launched on 23 April is a good example. The price increase on the base model is about Rs 25,000 over the outgoing car.

So for mass-market models the price increase is likely to be in the region of 5 percent to 10 percent.

But where the costs will differ significantly, is when models have to be completely redesigned to meet new crash safety norms. Take the upcoming Mahindra Thar for instance. It is being built on a completely new platform, ground up. Prices are likely to increase by at least 20-25 percent when it comes back into the market.

What About Emissions Compliance?

While safety norms are one aspect of price increase, the other big factor is complying with Bharat Stage 6 or BS-VI emissions norms, which come into effect from April 2020.

To meet the BS-VI emissions norms, petrol vehicles fortunately, won’t have to have huge technology changes. Petrol vehicles require minor redesigns to the exhaust, an upgrade to the ECU software and in some cases changes to the fuel-injection system design to meet the new standards – calling for a reduction of 25 percent in NOx levels.

Diesel vehicles, however, will need significant upgrades. Diesel vehicles need to reduce particulate matter emissions drastically, by 80 percent. Also nitrous oxide levels will need to come down by 70 percent for diesel cars.

To achieve this, diesel cars need either devices like a diesel particulate filter or DPF (that’s pretty expensive) and urea-injection systems built into the car. This will increase the cost of a diesel engine by Rs 50,000 to Rs 1 lakh at least, even for smaller engines, leading to an overall increase of at least Rs 1.5 lakh on the car.