One of the reasons why the Renault Kwid is $4000 is because, well, it uses cheap materials, and with that comes a very bad safety rating. This is enabled by India's nearly non-existent car safety regulations. Everything has a "price".
Ahhh safety, driving, and the developing world. Ugh. I haven't tested the hypothesis but I think the switch from mopeds to cars has resulted in a huge number of traffic fatalities. This was super evident in Thailand as it's quite clear that non tuk-tuk/rickshaw or motorcycle transport is a very new thing. There's an obliviousness to the fact that they're driving thousands of pounds of steel and nobody else on the road is protected in the same way.
India's drivers are actually pretty awesome, but they've had cars for a lot longer. Still. More people driving and perhaps being the first in their families to actually own a car means bad news.
Not that I see any good solution other than waiting a few generations, widespread driver's ed is probably cost prohibitive. Still. Ugh.
Sorting by the second column gives a good picture about which country has more dangerous drivers. And Thailand is #2... so your claim tracks well against this reality.
Also interesting: The US has about two thirds the amount of fatalities by 100k people compared to India. I.e. the US should first improve its own stats before trying to school anyone else, especially considering that countries like the UK show that it could be improved 4-fold.
Comparing fatalities per 100k people seems like a pretty useless statistic when we're talking about safety standards. If you look at fatalities per 100,000 motor vehicles it's 12.9 compared to 130. So 10x as much. An even better statistic to use would be fatalities per 1 billion vehicle miles. But that data isn't available for India.
Non-motorized transportation options aren't counted in vehicle miles. So accidents involving pedastrians, bicycles and other bystanders would skew this some. Since car accidents don't just hurt other motorists it's useful to measure this against the total population.
Is it not useful to look at both the statistic you mention along with the ones you responded to? They may not be equal in importance, but merit some consideration, no?
Also, looking at accidents per distance driven hides hides the fact that more time spent on the road is a societal choice that also leads to more fatalities.
To get a decent idea of what's going on, you need to know VMT per capita, fatalities per vmt, how many crashes are fatal, and ideally quite a few other things (urban/rural mix, etc.).
One of the best ways to make roads safer would be to just let people drive less. The US has fairly safe roads per VMT (by world standards), but people end up driving a lot more than in most other places, which negates this somewhat.
Agreed - thus my comment that this is comparing to the world. Western Europe has remarkably "safe" roads (scare quotes because we call them safe despite tens of thousands of people dying per year).
I was considering the first column, which does list Thailand as second highest in terms of road fatalities per 100k inhabitants. By second column, I didn't mean to say skip the column with country names -- that may be the mixup. Here's the source data too: http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/road_safety_st.... I think considering the number of road fatalities and accounting for population seems like a good enough comparative measure.
For fender benders or even total car writeoffs, sure. But for fatalities? From my admittedly narrow and predominantly first-world view that doesn't sound plausible.
I saw two fatal accidents in Vietnam in the three weeks I was visiting. This wasn't unusual, other tourists saw similar numbers.
I'd guess wealthy drivers simply paid the deceased's family (and the police if necessary), or in other cases the pedestrian or cyclist was blamed entirely and the accident not recorded as a motor vehicle accident.
Not sure what you mean about Thailand and cars. Cars have been popular in popular areas like Bangkok and Udon Thani for well over a decade and it definitely isn't some new thing.
Thailand is _very recently_ a much more wealthy country than it was even twenty years ago. The per capita car ownership has certainly gone up drastically in the last twenty years, particularly on the islands and more rural areas where the primary form of transport is still mostly tuk tuks and scooters. Automotive manufacturing doesn't necessarily reflect the car ownership of the local population.
Could the answer be to save extra money on the body work and provide less safety for the passengers? I'm wondering if it is like US football compared to rugby. In football the players have so much padding, they run into each other much harder, as they've got protection. In rugby, the players are much more tactical in how they intercept the opposing team.
> There's an obliviousness to the fact that they're driving thousands of pounds of steel and nobody else on the road is protected in the same way.
I think they are, they just don't care in that part of the world. I remember in Cambodia seeing the Lexus SUVs constantly almost running pedestrians and riders over, if you can afford a Lexus in Cambodia, you can afford to get out of trouble for running someone over (although most of the owners had drivers, who would end up taking the fall).
All second hand. I dunno how Lexus got to be the only luxury car in Cambodia (I assume some deal involving Japanese loans for bridges/roads e.t.c) but all those cars are second hand. Still very expensive given the average income in Cambodia but anyone who's got the moeny ends up with a second hand lexus suv.
Japanese have strict rules on used cars, meaning all of them wind up going abroad relatively early. I wouldn't be surprised if those lexuses are right hand even though Cambodia is left hand.
Reputation - according to the half of my family from Cambodia/Vietnam, Toyota are the Rolls-Royce of the East, Lexus is the luxury division of Toyota. They are also very reliable cars.
Do you imagine this is different in any other part of the world? In the West, if you run someone down and even kill them, you will often escape any serious penalty.
What constitutes a "serious penalty" is a function of who you are, how much money you have and who's judging. You and I can probably escape "serious" consequences but most people cannot.
Effective means of personal transportation shouldn't mean four wheeled vehicles by default. Bikes, motor scooters, motorcycles, Oneboards, skateboards, etc are all probably much more effective than single occupancy drivers in a 4-5 seat vehicle.
When it’s convenient to carry a family’s worth of groceries on a skateboard, perhaps your argument might make sense.
Regarding a skateboard.. seriously? Effective isn’t just about energy consumption, it’s about time as well. A five mile trip on a skateboard doesn’t sound very “effective” and it’s pretty much impossible in a place like India. Riding a bicycle in India (or a motorcycle) is also rather ineffective unless you want to be scorched by the unrelenting sun and covered with the ubiquitous dirt and dust. If you have a child, it becomes even more ridiculous.
For a single person going from point A to B with zero cargo, a bike or motorcycle might be effective, but as a primary means for family transportation, it’s ludicrous.
“Effective” means safe, reliable and multipurpose, not “smallest possible footprint.”
I guess my four mile commute on a skateboard isn't effective, despite the fact that I'm going faster than the cars and buses stuck in traffic, not to mention pedestrians. Also I can easily fit dinner from the grocery in my backpack.
did anyone let a robot try its luck on an urban street in india yet? looking forward to see how that works out... for sure it will need another mode that is more agressive to not just get stuck.
Hmm. If the pedestrians know they're not engaged in a dominance game with an aggressive human driver, they might actually be more likely to get out of the way.
Why? We don't know what'll happen, but if you know an automated car will stop for you even if you're in the wrong, then why not go for it if you're already in an environment and culture with aggressive pedestrians and drivers.
Because you'll be more likely to feel sorry for the driver, and less likely to feel defensive.
It will be no more socially acceptable to jaywalk in front of an autonomous car than it would be to cut in line. (And yes, I know, line-cutting is rampant in China... but in India?)
You can easily see it the other way around. That cars act rudely by obstructing pedestrians and "cut the line" continuously. A lot of the paraphernalia in western style roads just reinforces the status of cars at the expense of other users.
Have you ever been to Delhi or Bombay? Spend 30 seconds on a street there then come back and comment.
There is no “dominance game” – unless you’re trying to dominate the random cows standing in the street, negotiate a path around some random trash fire in the road, avoiding getting ensnarled in a swarm of tuk-tuts or navigating streets with potholes the size of Rhode Island or buses that will deftly try to squeeze you onto the sidewalks without any regard for anything else. Then there is the sea of people flowing along and through the road like refugees fleeing Smyrna.
A car is a tool that a poor family can use to multiply their effectiveness and pull themselves out of poverty. Lots of people are willing to gamble their safety for the chance.
For those in that area that can't afford a safe, reliable car, perhaps it's a step up from a motorbike though. Not to mention, it allows for more passengers in the death trap.
Depends on top speed. If you moped never breaks 25mph then a car doing 50mph could easily be less safe. It's also much more dangerous to people around you.
Fatalities per mile is a tricky metric for comparing across modes, though. At least in the US, people getting cars often comes with adopting a car-centric lifestyle: you move to the suburbs, your commute and trips to the grocery store get significantly longer, etc. This is why fatalities per mile are higher on a bike, but fatalities per trip are actually slightly lower than a car: people with cars take longer trips.
> This is why fatalities per mile are higher on a bike, but fatalities per trip are actually slightly lower than a car: people with cars take longer trips.
Maybe I'm just dense but how does that invalidate parent's point? Based on what you are saying (difference in trip length), it appears that fatalities per mile actually does a better job (than fatalities per trip) at representing the relative safety of different classes of vehicles...
The question most people care about is something like "would buying a car make me more or less likely to die". If buying a car means you're safer per-mile but leads you to take longer trips, then not buying a car is safer.
Depends if you limit it to moped - moped collision then the numbers are different. But a car - moped collision is arguably a car fatality not a moped fatality.
That said walking is very dangerous per mile, but cars get a lot more miles on them.
If you're in a place where everyone drives a moped or bicycle and cars are rare, then mopeds are a lot safer. Stick the moped in traffic surrounded by clueless SUV drivers and now the moped is a death-trap.
Go to a place where everyone rides a bicycle and there's no cars and I guarantee the fatality-per-mile rate is ridiculously low. See downtown Copenhagen for example.
In the Netherlands you are about 4 times more likely to be seriously injured or killed due to an accident by distance driven on a moped compared to in a car. This is due to the safety features of cars and to a lesser extent the fact that young people, who end up in a lot of accidents are allowed to ride a moped but not a car.
What? This definitely is not true in the United States. In Michigan, both the driver and passenger are required to wear a helmet on a motorcycle unless they have special medical insurance -- as far as I know, mopeds do not have the same requirement and it is very evident if you spend any time in our cities.
Having a slower vehicle doesn't always mean safer, despite contrary belief -- I can get out of the way of a car merging into my lane far easier on my motorcycle than any moped rider can.
Unfortunately this is no different to any other car sold at the same price point in India. There isn't anything special about this price (other than clickbait for Westerners) - other cars like the Suzuki Alto which also don't come with airbags as standard cost the same.
The disruption of the Model 3 (or any Tesla car so far) has never been about being cheap, but just more appealing than the crappy electric cars from before while being, on average, marginally cheaper when you consider the costs of fuel+maintenance. For this only reason the entire premise of this article is already crap. This whole article sounds a lot like a Koch Bros funded piece (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/koch-electric-vehicles_u...).
Almost every month, I think about William Gibson's talk of cardboard car bodies in The Peripheral, and wait to see it eventuate.
If the cars drive themselves and we are then less rushed as we can entertain/work during a drive, will lower speeds be accepted? And if they're safer as a result of the self-driving and lower speed, could a cheaper shell work? And even more so if price is a primary consideration and you don't own the car?
In Australia, a scrape on your car feels like the beginning of the end. In Europe, where people cram into tiny parks out of necessity, bumps and scrapes seem more like a fact of life.
Bear in mind that driving conditions in India are very different than those in the western world. From what I've seen when I was there on most roads cars go at 50-60 kph (30-40 mph).
Traffic speed in cities is usually so bad that you will rarely if ever meet with a major accident using these cars. That doesn't mean that safety isn't important. It's just that we are not talking about 70mph American freeway speeds.
In the immediate cities sure. But go outside to the "highways", and it's like Mad Max out there. Seriously. Everyone is hauling ass on no lane roads, passing each other constantly into oncoming traffic. Also NO ONE wears seat belts. I had to demand them in cars that were picking me up. Usually they were either disconnected, or hiding away never used. It's terrifying.
Traffic speed is not constrained on the brand new inter-city freeways being built in India, though. I had that experience as a passenger not too long ago, and the high speeds + Indian driving habits were ... exciting.
> One of the reasons why the Renault Kwid is $4000 is because, well, it uses cheap materials, and with that comes a very bad safety rating.
Still, better safety rating than a scooter, and that's the most important part (next to way better emission control, as scooters generally use nasty 2-stroke engines).
Can you name a 2-stroke model scooter being sold new in India? Everything I can find currently being sold is 4-stroke. In fact AFAICT 2-strokes are illegal to sell new in India.
(Personally I'd rather ride a scooter than drive a tiny car in a dense urban area, because my awareness is much higher on a scooter, and also I've ridden scooters around London for a decade.)
As an India staying in Bangalore, this is spot on.
There is one more important thing its urban parking spaces. You can never build enough car parking for India's urban population density. This is apart from the fact that scooters give better mileage(Motorcycles even better).
My Bajaj discover 150cc gives 60-70 kilometers/litre.
Is it? I mean maybe it is, I don't know, but I'm guessing you don't really know either. I can imagine that maybe a scooter could be safer than a very bad car. You can get crushed in a car, cars go faster, you've got less situational awareness.
I'm not sure this is one of those things that is just obviously true.
Safety ratings do not account for different speeds, and different driving styles, so it's probably best to assume those are equal, for the sake of the conversion (which is about _safety rating_).
Cars are slow to crush. If you're involved in a collision while on a scooter, you don't have a crumple zone to slow down whatever might be eventually hitting you.
Cars have seatbelts. If you're hit on a scooter, you are more likely to be thrown out of the vehicle, compared to being hit while in a car. Being thrown out of a vehicle is not good for your survival rate.
I actually have no clue what safety features scooters have, if any. Cars have a ton.
Maybe on a scooter you can nimbly get out of the way of a situation on a crowded Indian road that in a car you can't. More safety features don't help you if the other option doesn't even have a crash in the first place.
In the UK you can drive a scooter at 16 but not a car until 17. Is that because they are safer for an inexperienced driver and other road users?
You can drive a Scooter with a _very_ limited power and top speed at 16. They're safer because they don't go any faster than someone with a road bike can cycle.
In my experience, motorcycle riders are much less attentive to blinkers and take a lot more risks on the road.
This affects all drivers.
However, AFAIK, in most of the USA (that's it, not in California) motorcycle riding is a lot more strict, with regard to lane-splitting. Only where lane-splitting is banned I can agree with your point.
In most of the world, where lane-splitting is the norm, my point stands.
If you're on a scooter you get mowed down regardless if the colliding party is a scooter, a car or a truck. And even if the colliding party is a scooter, there's still all the traffic behind it. So it doesn't matter.
That is a job for the government to actually hire and train cops to enforce traffic rules (red lights, DUI, right-of-way)...
Cars are generally faster than scooters. If everyone else is driving a scooter too, you're much less likely to get hurt in a crash, or to have a crash, because the energies are much lower and the speeds are much lower (low speeds make it easier to avoid crashes). Also, momentum is a real thing. Getting hit by a scooter at 10mph isn't nearly as bad as getting hit by a truck at 10mph.
A valid point. I honestly don't know what is best for India, but the Kwid is a step forward in innovation, at least. It would have been nice if the article covered these points, like some of the others I've read on the Kwid.
> Also, if we think of other road users, less safe cars might encourage the driver to drive more carefully and less likely to endanger others.
I really hope you intended this as satire. Over a million people die each year in road traffic accidents because people aren't perfect and have accidents. Feeling safe in a car has very little to do with how safe the car itself it, and more to do with how "normal" travelling in a car feels.
If the driver risk compensates, as suggested in research below, the risk to people in the car stays the same by having fewer accidents in less safe cars but the risks to other road users also decrease.
Also, the driving and road culture in most lower income developing countries are very different from those in developed countries.
"Anti-lock brakes are the subject of some experiments centred around risk compensation theory, which asserts that drivers adapt to the safety benefit of ABS by driving more aggressively. In a Munich study, half a fleet of taxicabs was equipped with anti-lock brakes, while the other half had conventional brake systems. The crash rate was substantially the same for both types of cab, and Wilde concludes this was due to drivers of ABS-equipped cabs taking more risks, assuming that ABS would take care of them, while the non-ABS drivers drove more carefully since ABS would not be there to help in case of a dangerous situation.[26]"
Compare this to a 80s Mercedes 190: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gw1GNfA_AnU . The passenger cell remains solid though the crash dummies experience injuries. I often wonder how much better the automotive market would be if solid designs remained in circulation instead of these new-old mistakes re-entering the market every time.
In a lot of post-Soviet countries, rather than buying new, they import second-hand cars from Western European countries and keep them running. If you have skilled mechanics, and a steady stream of spare parts (from everyone else importing the same cars), it's quite easy to keep your car running up to 300,000km or beyond.
The other week I was in Armenia, and although the average wage is $400/mo, you see more BMWs and Mercedes on the road than you do in the U.K. Admitidely the climate helps, as you don't need to worry about rust in most of country.
This is a smart plan. A 20 year old MB has technology that is now finally trickling into modern pedestrian cars, such as electronic start key, 5 speed automatic, and side airbags.
You can occasionally see a car older than the driver even on the German highways.
In order to have a car in such a good condition, you have to take care of it. Not just mandatory service intervals, but really take care about every detail.
Those solid designs mean much higher impact forces on the passengers. Crumple zones are a significant part of why modern cars are more survivable in accidents.
You just don't want to make the passenger part of the crumple zone, which appears to be what Renault has done here.
True, that was my point. The front of the 190 collapses significantly while the passenger compartment remained stable, which is quite unlike the Renault. From my reads on the evolution of automotive safety, it seems that the core lesson that was learnt from the aviation industry was to make sure the passenger compartment integrity was maintained first and foremost.
The 1980s Mercedes crash test is a full frontal crash test, which simulates the car crashing into a wall. Those kinds of crashes are rare. The Kwid and Nano videos are offset crash tests, which simulate the car crashing into another car. I bet the Mercedes would also fare very poorly in an offset crash test.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOw-lgEG6Y0 at 0:53 and 2:17 is where they show an offset crash; not very comprehensive but it is clear to me that the shell remained pretty solid. I guess I am still in shock at the utter lack of integrity in the passenger compartment of the Kwid and the Nano - I really thought cars in this decade would be designed better than that. All of the safety comparisons with mopeds etc. sound a little ridiculous to me - I feel somewhat safe saying that none of us would ever knowingly buy the Kwid or Nano even if they were allowed in our respective countries; I definitely would prefer to walk over buying it. If it is not good enough for me, IMO it is not good enough for the folks in India.
That's not the point I was making. I am saying that the design principles of good design, especially for safety, should be well known now that decades have passed. Two additional points:
1. Can a 190 of that vintage be had for $4k now? IMO, that is a better investment than the Renault.
2. Could a car company license to build that 190 in India now at a low cost? That would have saved a lot of the design cost and provided folks a safe design.
Safer normally means heavier. I'm not sure of fuel costs in India, but this Renault has a 800cc engine
1 is true, but I assume the Renault will have a warranty, dealer support etc
2 I'd doubt it. Older Mercs were over engineered (the last of which was the w124) - it's not rare to still see them today, whereas other marques from the era are in scrapyards
As an alternative available in India for sale now, consider the VW Polo: https://www.cardekho.com/overview/Volkswagen_Polo/Volkswagen..., available for ~$7800 with dual airbags. True, that is nearly twice the price, but the safety results at http://www.globalncap.org/results/ (bottom, with airbags) speak for themselves. I know everyone has a different price on safety but buying one of these second hand, IMO, would be a better investment than buying the Renault new.
In the Global NCAP page above, it seems that the Kwid was re-tested and in subsequent tests, it looks like the passenger cell retained its integrity.
Yea, but if you made it safe, it would be too expensive for most of the target market to buy. This is the developing world.
The same thing happens everywhere, a country goes through a period of wild-west capitalism, then, if things go well, eventually it gets rich enough to be able to afford things like safe products, worker safety laws, a social safety net, and so on. I am not aware of any country that has gone straight from non-industrialized to safe industrialization.
If the issue is cars being status symbol being fancy but cheap won't help and won't make it desiderable nor a status symbol anymore than a dirt cheap rolex would
Did you read the article?! Renault's approach was to model the cheaper car after an existing car (Kwid) that was proven/already popular on the Indian market, and then they drove down component costs. They are relying on a market proven market segment (and the Kwid's halo effect won't harm).
I have a hard time understanding why 60+ years of knowledge about safety cells is ignored in this design-to-cost. I don't know how much more the cost of this car would have been in materials if reasonable attention had been paid to maintaining the integrity of the passenger compartment.
I have a hard time imagining that 6k of the remaining cost (a basic car in the US can be had at $10k) would be because of a decent safety standard. I am curious to know how much more than $4k this Renault would be if they had spent a little time designing a safer passenger cell.
I don't think I ever asked that the car have airbags - with this car's atrociously weak passenger cell, an airbag would probably create more harm. All I am surprised by is the poor passenger cell that collapsed like it was made of pasta and everything in my comments has been directed to hoping they will redesign this thing to not collapse in a crash.
Safety requirements will easily hit that. Replacing airbags alone after an accident costs $3-5k. The crash test videos posted up-thread show there's a lot more than just airbags lacking, too.
So painful to read this article. How did it get on the front page? Is it that it's funny how confidently the author has no idea what "disrupt" means?
Summary: new car introduced at same price as current leading car in category, but with a bit more room and slightly nicer, and they give you cake when you pick it up.
For the below paragraphs alone I think this article is more than deserving of the front page:
> Short of a supercar delivery, I have never witnessed such time and effort spent on a customer. Actually, that’s the jaded American in me talking. Power Renault Kattupakkam didn’t spend this time and effort. They devoted it. They invested it, in a way merely given lip service during the sales training most American salespeople allegedly get, and which clearly isn't building goodwill with customers.
> In the US, everything about the car ownership experience — from research to negotiation to delivery to service — has been utterly and depressingly commoditized. Any positive emotional relationship between sellers and buyers has been sacrificed on the altar of efficiency. With rare exceptions — generally limited to the ultra high-end — the American buying experience is a circle of resentment. It’s I want your time vs. I don’t have much time.
I'm tired of feeling jaded about the American car buying experience so hearing something like this is very refreshing.
It is so weird seeing all these comments focused on price, perceived lack of quality, or how the article is link bait. The most important comparison between that $4000 car and Tesla is in the sales model, the delivery, and what happens after.
I was fascinated by the priest coming in to conduct puja as part of ceremonially handing the car over to the new owners. While it probably won't fly in America, it is this blending of modern and traditional that is lacking when we commoditized everything.
What Is Disruption, Anyway? ... In India, where the average wage remains a fraction of those in the first world, it starts with an affordable car that isn’t a complete piece of junk.
5 Paragraphs later:
It would be the same price as the sector-leading Maruti Suzuki, but with more space. It would include a 7” infotainment system with a touchscreen. It would have real ground clearance. It would resemble a smaller version of Renault’s wildly popular Duster SUV.
New sexy features don't make something disruptive. Sure, it may pan out to be a popular vehicle, but disruptive? because it has infotainment?... spare us.
The point of the article is that disruption depends on market. Infotainment in India might be like the "not-getting-beaten-up-for-overbooking" of United.
Yeah, I don't understand how this is disruptive. Except for few improvements, this sounds very much like other cars in the market. The delivery process full of rituals is a standard practise in India, so that doesn't make Renault any different either.
Anyone else feeling slightly uneasy with the exciting and "disruptive" plan of ushering a population of 1.3 billion into the glorious era of the fossil-fuelled car ?
Just because the "developed" world has already brought us 90% to irreversible damage doesn't mean that we should deny cars to people who couldn't afford them previously. I'm sure that those cars will be sold as EVs as soon as that's feasible. Meanwhile countries that have the money could probably do more to reduce emissions. India's efforts to reduce emissions (i.e. increase them less) look extremely ambitions given their budget.
I'm pretty sure that being brought up to 90%* irreversible damage is actually a perfectly legitimate reason to deny cars to people who couldn't afford them previously.
The value created by access to a car they can afford will advance both India and the world to the next level of health, abundance, and technology. Just as the car and the ICE advanced so many other places of the world from the horse cart. With that I believe will come the education and technology needed to push us past ICEs and further into the future.
(1) when the car and the ICE advanced so many other places of the world, we didn't have alternative technologies. Now we do,
(2) climate change is already underway, with mid-term scenarios ranging from very worrying to catastrophic,
(3) the population densities and city sizes in those places of the world where ICE cars saw a boom in the last century were nowhere near that of India. A car-centric model in cities over 10M population is a disaster,
(4) for this reason the most comparable example would be China, who is experiencing massive pollution problems in cities, and has already reacted with traffic-restricting laws and the rapid construction of metropolitan mass-transit networks and a high-speed rail network.
I get the argument that it's unfair for the West to deny to others what we already experimented in the past, but I really don't think it's in the interest of India (even ignoring global factors like climate change) to become a massively polluting car-centric society. We know better now, the way forward is not to reenact the West's 80s, it's to take advantage of not having made the West's errors to skip that and embrace newer tech and trends directly (just as landlines were skipped in so many countries).
I do, but that's an unreasonable feeling to have (even though I don't drive). We can't willingly prevent other people from accessing stuff (cars but also meat which has similar implications) when we westerners live in such opulence. Yes, I'm all for degrowth.
“In India,” he said, “you cannot look or be strange. Choosing a new entrant is a risk. You have to be careful with your money. A new product must be different.”
Isn't this contradicting itself? What I understood from this article is (1) Renault are selling the cheapest possible standard looking car and (2) They do localized, ritualistic sales & delivery which appeals to their buyers.
Seems to me that this is a story about a car that isn't trying to disrupt anything or be any more radical than absolutely necessary to meet its price/cost goals. It is trying to bring standard low cost Renaults to India.
The article mentions the Tata Nano, a more radical low cost concept. It could also have mentioned the Twizy, Renault's current attempt at a tiny lower cost car radically different from other models. Both of these stretch the standard definition of "car" and you might call them disruption attempts. The Kwid is explicitley trying to do the opposite.
The current suite of car types (budget hatchback, family sedan, SUV..) is fairly stable. This is probably because use cases have remained the same, the technology has remained similar & underlying economic factors of production haven't changed much.
Two things could change that: EV technology & AV technology, especially AV.
For example, if most passenger cars are autonomous taxis, we might see more specialized designs. Slow, single seaters for urban travel. Larger comfort vehicles for longer distance travel.. etc. That would be disruptive.
This article should be viewed not from a point of technology disruption, but from a point of marketing disruption. The correct analogy would be with Lexus rather than Tesla (apparently the latter was brought in purely for extra clickbaitness). Lexus offered no technical innovation, however gained supply chain optimizations allowed Toyota to launch a car that offered significantly more value per money then it was common for the market at that time. A flavor of exclusivity together with non-exclusive price tag made Lexus a huge marketing success. So is the Kwid marketing disruption? Could be. If it's a right product for the right market - why not? Is the parallel with Tesla relevant? Absolutely not, because Tesla is known first of all as a technology break-through. Of course, good marketing & PR played huge role for the Tesla's success, but it's still secondary. All in all, the article is about a successful product/market fit case. It has nothing to do with technology advances.
I completely disagree; Renault when buying Dacia, bought a company capable to produce a compact car at a ridiculously low price on an industrial platform that was proven (Clio) and on a market segment that is the bread and butter of all major European car manufacturer. However the same car was sold at almost twice the price within the EU single market as it was outside it.
Before that, you had the experience of FIAT with a single platform produced in Europe (FIAT Uno) and South America (Fiat Palio). It was a commercial success for the company. However, the price for the Palio was lower than the Uno, as it was targetting developing market.
The more mature market are not benefiting from technological development from those cars, as they are based on proven platform (read already paid for), or from the price reduction, as the competition is locked in place, and an aggressive price politic might actually be detrimental to the product perception. This is without even mentioning the cartel like behaviour or European car manufacturer.
I think you miss the point of the article, which is about Renault finding in India an opportunity to be as disruptive as Tesla is in the First World, with diametrally opposed products, but similar appeal to their respective markets by proposing an affordable yet radically new product.
That ceremony looks monstrously tiring to an introverted westerner like me. I don't want to cut a cake and watch a priest bless my car; I want to walk onto a lot, look over the car I pre-selected online to make sure it's the right one, and then give someone some money and drive away.
I'm also wondering how long that friendly attitude - and the traveling pop-up repair program - will last. Once everyone wants one of these, you no longer have to cajole people.
It sounded similarly uncomfortable to me. But you and I are not Indians living in India. If I had grown up there I might be more comfortable with that tradition.
That's because, he definitely is not a priest, he is most likely an employee at the dealership. Im an Indian, that guying doing the puja doesnot resemble a Pujari (priest), Hindu pujari's have a very traditional dressing style. I feel that the writer was either unaware or just adding masala(spicing up) to his article by claiming him to be a priest.
The puja ceremony is part of Hindu culture on any major financial transaction. Even in the US, it is common for Hindu families to perform it after buying a car or home though perhaps not as elaborate. Also you will find in India the stores have many more staff compared to US stores. Imagine Walmart with an employee manning every isle. I guess due to labor cost being much lower.
They mention using a single Indian supplier and designing for that supplier as an advantage. Where I work we wouldn't be allowed to do that - always want at least two different suppliers so we don't put ourselves at risk.
Hope it works out for them - seems like a fun little car.
Also, the Takata airbag debacle affecting a variety of automakers but primarily Honda (1) is an example of how using a single supplier and developing relationships can be a bad plan.
I was just watching on ViceLand an episode about the Indian (non-existent) sewage system. Millions of people there have no sanitation facilities and deficate anywhere, where possible. And are living of a few dollars a month. It's really worthwhile watching, btw.
So talking about "quality cars" for $4000 here seems totally surreal. And that that would be disruptive is even more of a strange observation.
The author sure has an interesting story to tell, but the conclusions, title etc of the article shows of actual lacking good journalism/storytelling.
> deficate anywhere, where possible. And are living of a few dollars a month.
Yes, both of those are real problems but if you look at the economic data from India there is a rapidly growing middle class that can now afford something better than a $600 two stroke engine scooter. When you have a population of 1.2 billion, even if a large majority remain in relative poverty, the disposable income and buying power of the new middle class is not something companies are going to ignore. India is a fascinating study in contrasts, the gap between rich and poor is incredibly huge. There's a domestic space program that was capable of sending a probe to Mars, yet designated defecation streets are a real thing. It seems surreal because it is, but that's been the status quo there for a very, very long time.
At home we have a 7kW charger (the most we could get without having to change either the main fuseboard in the house, or have stuff dug up).
That gives the Zoe a charge-time of just over three hours (as we have a 22kWh battery) versus over 13 hours for the Model X. That's 35 miles of charge an hour for the Zoe, and 21 miles of charge an hour for the Model X.
The Zoe can fast-charge at up to 43kW on motorway service stations, whilst the Model X and charge at 120kW. In the UK there are way more locations with fast-chargers the Zoe can use than there are Tesla superchargers.
The Zoes have either 22kWh or 41kWh battery packs (for respectively 150 and 250 miles NDEC, so an effective ~115 and 190 miles). Xs have 90kWh battery packs.
As with Teslas, charging time depends on the charger's powerand whether you want 80% or 100%.
Zoes support chargers up to 43kW and home chargers up to 22kW ("Wallbox"), Tesla's superchargers are 120kW and home chargers are up to 19.2kW (though IIRC that requires the $k High Amperage Charger Upgrade)
Well, that's because Tesla was they one who started actively pushing world in this direction. You can buy this Renault Zoe now probably in large part because of Tesla. Also, Tesla is one of the rare electric cars that looks good, it seems other manufacturers are trying visually separate hybrid/electric from regular cars, and don't give them same design.
Totally agree. There's no way I could've afforded a Tesla when we got the Zoe, four years ago. Including the battery rental the Zoe was £225/month, with a first payment of £5,000.
I've only been able to get the Model X because I've been irresponsible with money, and because we IT folk get paid more than we're worth to society.
I don't think this is true (not the accessible part of course). Renault started to sell Zoe in 2012, Tesla Roadster was selling for 4 years at that time and Tesla Inc was releasing new model.
I don't say that Tesla single handedly pushed electric cars forward, but it draw a lot of attention to it, like Toyota Prius sparked attention to hybrid cars before that. Before 2010 electric car was treated mostly as a freaky concepts and sales were almost non-existent.
At that price I'm pretty sure the battery is not sold with it, which means you need to pay a rent subscription for it. In France this rent monthly cost for a ZOE battery is about 50 euros a month
All the article is telling me is that American dealership experience must be incredibly shitty. We bought a brand new VW Polo here in the UK(and Polo is the cheapest VW car you can buy here), on the delivery day it was waiting for us in the dealership wrapped in ribbons, my partner got a massive bouquet of flowers, there were cards saying "happy new car day <partner's name>", and two sales assistants spent a lot of time with us showing us every bit of the car. That sounds pretty similar to the experience described in the article, minus the religious parts.
Is a cheap car what we call disruption in 2017, really? We know that cars do not scale, look at LA traffic. Seems like a pretty bad idea to replicate the same problems to the 3rd world.
It is literally disruption. Disruption to the city, to pedestrians and cyclists, to traffic, to well flowing movement (not sure that applies to Indian cities).
This doesn't sound like marketplace disruption as described by Christensen.
Under his model, the marketplace disruptor attacks from the bottom. The challenging product is demonstrably, objectively worse in one or more ways than the incumbent.
If introduced into the US, the Kwid would indeed be a marketplace disruptor. But in India, where the article itself points out that relatively few cars are driven, the Kwid is a luxury item.
In this view, neither anything Tesla has offered nor the Kwid should be considered disruptive. They're both vulnerable to a determined, capable incumbent.
To say that this is unsafe is incorrect. It would be unsafe in the west compared to other cars, but in India compared to other cars and motorbikes that riders have as an option the Renault actually INCREASES safety dramatically
They increase safety in the short-term. As the number of automobiles goes up, they become more dangerous. Essentially,
safety = mass of your car / average mass of collisionable vehicles + C, where C is a constant that describes how safe the car would be driving the road alone
The safest world is one where you have a tank and everybody else walks.
This is something I've always wondered, why are even the cheapest cars (in the Western world) so expensive? Isn't it possible to make a new car under ~ $10,000?
Safety requirements. Here's a crash test between a 2015 Nissan Tsuru, the least expensive sedan sold by Nissan in Mexico, and a 2016 Nissan Versa, the least expensive sedan sold by Nissan in the United States.
Put a 2017 Nissan Versa against a 2017 Harley Davidson. They're both allowed on the road.
I've wondered if less safe vehicles (lighter, cheaper, smaller) could be made and required NOT to be on high speed roadways (above 45mph, freeways, etc.), or just have the US admit their regs are too strenuous.
Did you know you can buy baby formula in third world countries for a fraction of the price here? All because evil regulations make companies make use actual safe ingredients and manufacturing practices.
When will this big government madness end. When will the US admit their regs are too strenuous so we can finally buy our cut rate industrial runoff baby formula in peace.
Your comment isn't up to HN standards, and it also misses the point. We already allow two-wheeled death machines on freeways, and we allow people to ride them without helmets, and we allow children to ride as passengers.
Your sarcasm would have made a valid point if modern sedans were the low bar in vehicular safety in the US.
I thought it was illegal to ride a motorcycle/bicycle without a helmet? I'm trying to find a flaw in your argument...but it's not easy. Though I feel as if we shouldn't go back on safety standard progress just because there is a subset of vehicles where there's not much we can do in terms of the vehicle...but I'm sure there is a lot we can do in terms of what the rider wears.
I don't know about US, but in EU you can buy mini-cars that have 4 wheels, but are equipped with 50-250cc engines, and do not classify as cars legally, so you don't even need a car driving licence - a moped driving licence is usually enough. They also don't have to conform to "car" safety standards(they usually do have seatbelts though), and yeah, they are not allowed on the motorways in most EU countries, just like mopeds aren't.
Spoilers, The Versa is totalled, but the driver can probably survive. The Tsuru has the front half obliterated and the crash test dummy's skin comes out.
No airbags on the Tsuru, but who cares, the car body can't survive the crash anyway.
There are other ways to satisfy safety requirements; they just result in cars that are unappealing in most markets. Big rubber wrap-around bumpers, for example. Those are cheap!
That was traumatizing to watch. The Tsuru looks like a 90s Nissan Sentra though that might just be appearances. It makes me sick to see the passenger compartment just plain collapse.
It's pretty much an early nineties Sentra (B13 chassis), yes. There must be some minor production improvements that snuck in there over the years, one would hope, but definitely not much.
$10,000 is a pretty arbitrary line to draw, such that we should consider anything above it "so expensive."
It'd probably be very easy to strip out the catalytic converter, airbags, ABS, no-stick upholstery, and a bunch of other modern stuff from a Toyota Yaris to get it below the $10k line. It wouldn't make a huge amount of sense, even if you didn't care about safety and emissions. A lot of that modern stuff (engine management! corrosion resistance!) is responsible for cars lasting so much longer than they used to, with relatively little maintenance required.
A modern car takes about 4 years and a team of about a few hundred engineers to design and bring it mass market. That would be a contributing factor to the price.
Looking at the video of the Nissan Tsuru vs. Versa posted above, it seems to me that an airbag might not have been much help in the Tsuru - the passenger compartment in the Tsuru just plain collapsed whereas the Versa's remained whole.
I think this article would be substantially improved by removal of references to Tesla or "disruption".
The stuff about the Renault is interesting, but all the "what these unthinking Musk fanboys don't realize..." is obnoxious and doesn't add anything to the article.
I confessed I skimmed most of the article, but am I fair if I say that it makes the point that electrification is just a nice-to-have feature for rich western hipsters? And nowhere does it raise the issue of the global environmental issues if millions and millions of additional combustion engines? At least there's cake...
One thing that is not mentioned in the article at all, other than the existence of scooters, is that specifically a huge number of them are 2-stroke gasoline engines which are incredibly polluting. It's worth having a discussion about the environmental implications of a growing middle class in south asia buying cars, but at least if scooters are replaced with cars such as this on a 1:1 basis, the air will be a LOT cleaner. The air in Lahore or New Delhi on a typical day is a blue-gray haze full of two stroke engine exhaust. The typical two stroke scooter pollutes more than a giant american gas guzzling SUV from 20 years ago.
So wait, this means that if it weren't for safety and emission standards I'd be able to go out and buy a new car for 4000 dollars and a used car for a tiny fraction of that? I get that others want safety, but for me that's not as important as avoiding debt. Shouldn't I have the right to make that choice on my own?
To answer your first question: no. And as for the second, mostly no, unless you are purchasing a car that only kills or injures yourself when you get into a crash and also the emissions only go into your house and stay there.
I think the kwid is not going to disrupt much in India. I'm in India and if I want to buy a car and I'm not going to consider the kwid. It looks too cheap and small. If they would have made it a 2 seater I'd have thought about it.
>In the US, everything about the car ownership experience — from research to negotiation to delivery to service — has been utterly and depressingly commoditized
Clearly this guy hasn't walked into a Chrysler dealer and asked "How much horsepower can I get with four doors?"
The only thing a Renault will disrupt is the reliability of your transportation, and your bank account when you go for repairs. As a current Renault owner I have been forced to become an expert in automotive technology.
Why don’t you just limit the speed of the car to how much impact it can take without seriously injuring the passéngers and possibly pedestrians? That car can’t take a 40mph impact but maybe it can take a 25mph one?
But other cars aren’t limited to this speed. If I hit a car at 25 mph it might be safe, but if I hit it at 100mph that’s a different story. That other car has no input on how fast I hit it.
Why can't take they make a car like this for the European market? Not everybody wants to spend +20k € on a car. Somehow I feel this would probably cost +10k in Europe so what gives?
The problem of car safety isn't solved by the Renault driver driving slowly. The risk is still significant when the speeding large truck fails to stop/yield (is that even a concept?) and plows into the car.
Meanwhile, look at all the energy (and human time) being put into selling one car, but the streets and surrounding areas are covered in trash and worse.
I would much rather see these car salespeople doing what "The Ugly Indian" (see Facebook for group) is doing - cleaning up and decorating disgusting areas and teaching people by example how not to trash their home environments.
That delivery ceremony is amazing. Are the salaries so low in India that the car dealers can afford to have such a ceremony for every new car delivery?
Keep in mind that this is an article written by an American seemingly enamored by something in India, and like most write-ups of such kind, it romanticizes whatever happens in India while being over-critical of whatever happens back at home. As an Indian who currently lives in the US and has a much more 'level' view of both places, this fetishization is quite frustrating.
That being said, the ceremony looks a little too elaborate compared to what typically happens—the car is covered in flowers, and the dealership guy ceremoniously hands over a symbolic oversized key to the buyer. Pooja may or may not happen.
Also he rubbishes quite a bit what happens in the rest of the world (or is it US only).
I know that in the UK, I bought a new BMW and we came in, my wife got flowers, the car was covered and she got to pull it off to 'reveal' it, and the vendor took a good 1/2 hour explaining all the gadgets etc. So no flowers on the car and priest onboard, but definitely 'ceremonious' enough.
Plus the priest thing is very cultural and nothing to do with cars in specific. A lot of Indians typically do ritualistic ceremonies (pooja) for any slightly major life event. And for most Indians buying a car qualifies (even the cheapest car is a fundamentally aspirational purchase for the lower and the lower middle class).
I dunno if it's standard in the US, but Indians typically also distribute sweets to friends and neighbors to 'celebrate' the purchase.
> You couldn’t give a Model 3 away in Chennai or Bangalore. From wheel size to suspension to charging to structural integrity, no Tesla would survive, at any price. They’re not designed to.
I am still trying to understand how a 0 rating crash test car is being compared with one of the safest car? Am I missing something? Is this a sarcastic post?
