Hardly seems surprising that Renault / Dacia is the least worst since it is a European car company that doesn’t sell in the US. I should point out though that Dacia holds the record for the absolute worst NCAP safety ratings at this time and some Renault cars aren’t far behind. So swings and roundabouts.
I assume that you’re talking about the Dacia Spring which got 1 star (though the Renault Zoe got 0 stars recently and a few others did too in the past).
So whilst you’re not wrong that these cars currently hold the lowest ratings of cars tested with the new post-2020 procedure, I’m sure a lot of older cars would fare far worse.
And it’s fundamentally flawed to subject a tiny 970kg EV city car to the same tests as a 2-3 ton towering SUV. Besides the vastly different use cases, bigger and heavier vehicles will have an inherent advantage in most of the tests - hint none of them are adjusted for the weight of the vehicle.
I’m not saying this is somehow wrong, they’re simulating crashing into an average car or a stationary immovable object, just we’re automatically discounting small vehicles which have a genuinely valid reason to exist.
The new NCAP ratings only makes sense if we’re saying affordable, small, light cars don’t need to exist. Like everything automotive nowadays, it’s designed to gently nudge us towards big lumbering swollen hatchbacks as the holy grail of the car industry.
Hardly seems surprising that Renault / Dacia is the least worst since it is a European car company that doesn’t sell in the US. I should point out though that Dacia holds the record for the absolute worst NCAP safety ratings at this time and some Renault cars aren’t far behind. So swings and roundabouts.
I assume that you’re talking about the Dacia Spring which got 1 star (though the Renault Zoe got 0 stars recently and a few others did too in the past).
So whilst you’re not wrong that these cars currently hold the lowest ratings of cars tested with the new post-2020 procedure, I’m sure a lot of older cars would fare far worse.
And it’s fundamentally flawed to subject a tiny 970kg EV city car to the same tests as a 2-3 ton towering SUV. Besides the vastly different use cases, bigger and heavier vehicles will have an inherent advantage in most of the tests - hint none of them are adjusted for the weight of the vehicle.
I’m not saying this is somehow wrong, they’re simulating crashing into an average car or a stationary immovable object, just we’re automatically discounting small vehicles which have a genuinely valid reason to exist.
The new NCAP ratings only makes sense if we’re saying affordable, small, light cars don’t need to exist. Like everything automotive nowadays, it’s designed to gently nudge us towards big lumbering swollen hatchbacks as the holy grail of the car industry.