Nitin Gadkari has put forth a recommendation for all the automobile manufacturers in the country to make 6 airbags standard across all variants and segments of cars in the Indian automobile industry. This is a welcome step towards ensuring more safety equipment across the board for vehicles. Safety is increasingly becoming a dominant factor for customers while deciding on which car and segment to go for. Generally, the base models of most cars come with a dual airbag setup and only the top trims get more airbags. This recommendation by the Union Minister for Roads, Highways and Transport aims to bring forth a change in that trend. Safety should not be compromised irrespective of which car or variant you drive.
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6 Airbags Might Become Standard Across All Variants Of Cars
The 6 airbag setup consists of airbags on the steering wheel, dashboard, A-Pillars and Knee Areas. A lot of cars above the entry and mid-level hatchback segments come with 6 airbags as a part of the safety kit. However, these are offered in top-of-the-line variants only. Therefore, to get 6 airbags, one has to spend around Rs 13 lakh. This is clearly way higher than what most people can afford and hence, the safety on roads can’t be extended to all the cars. Indian roads take a lot of lives every year and many from these could be saved just by having more airbags on board. Nitin Gadkari aims to reach that stage where the safety standards could be maximized to all the car buyers out there.
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Additionally, he also asked the SIAM (Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers) members to fasten the process of introducing flex-fuel vehicles in the market. Flex-fuel vehicles refer to automobiles that can run on up to 100% Ethanol or Petrol or any combination of the two. Mixing Ethanol in a petrol can reduce the heavy imports required for petrol by India. Also, there will be emission and fuel consumption benefits to it.
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Measures like these from the Government are encouraging for the industry and climate change targets. However, it is challenging for the manufacturers to constantly keep developing technology to achieve stricter-becoming emission norms, in addition to keeping an eye out for electrification and alternate fuel-powered vehicles. The gap between IC engines and fully electric vehicles has to be bridged by using flex-fuel or alternate fuel-powered vehicles. On the safety side, currently, all the new vehicles are required to have a minimum of 2 airbags as standard across all variants. This will also impact the NCAP safety ratings of the cars immensely.
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