Nissan Datsun Go crash test results

The Nissan Datsun Go car which is aimed at the Indian market was recently tested for safety. The car failed spectacularly getting 0 out of possible 5 stars. The car comes without air bags and looking at the video of the test, it would not have done much good even if the car had been fitted with them. If the car can get this badly damaged at just 40mph speeds, I am just wondering what would happen at UK highway speeds of 70mph.

MNCs need to stop pushing lousy products into the emerging markets. And India definitely needs to have some minimum safety standards put in place.

Tesla Model S 2014 scores 5/5 in Euro NCAP crash test

The Tesla Model S electric car has scored 5 stars (the maximum) safety rating after testing by the Euro NCAP.

The 4 door saloon falls under the executive class.

Read the full report here.

Launch of the Proton's compact car - Proton Iriz in Malaysia

Malaysian car company is launching their new compact car the Proton Iriz today. Blogger Paul Tan is streaming the launch live.

Even before the launch of the car, it has received five-star rating in Adult Occupant Protection and four-star rating in Child Occupant Protection by the New Car Assessment Programme for Southeast Asian Countries (Asean NCAP).

The car will come in 3 Trim lines and 8 variants and in 7 colours.

Prices of the car (on-the-road) will be between RM42,438 and RM62,888.

BMW to recall cars over air bag fears

BMW is recalling about 1.6 million 3-Series vehicles produced between May 1999 and August 2006 worldwide. They will replace passenger-side front airbags made by Takata Corp because the inflators could break apart during deployment and injure passengers.

The recall is an extension of last year's recall of 240,000 cars globally for the same issue, he said.

The air bag supplied by Japan's Takata has also affected Honda Motor Co, Toyota Motor Corp, Nissan Motor Co, Mazda Motor Corp, Fuji Heavy Industries-owned Subaru, Mitsubishi, Ford and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles' Chrysler brand.

This latest recall will affect about 574,000 in the United States, about 450,000 in Germany and about 189,000 in the United Kingdom.

Safety risk of Heavy Quadricycles

Quadricycles, which as the name suggest, were originally derived from motorcycles. They have emerged as a new class of sub-compact vehicles in Europe.

They are small and fuel-efficient. I have recently noticed several Universities here in the UK using street-legal quadricycles. These include the Club Car Villager 2+2 LSV, the Renault Twizy 80, the Tazzari ZERO and the Ligier IXO J LINE 4 Places

Their safety tests are different from other cars as they do not have to pass any of the rigorous crash tests to which cars are subjected. However,according to a recent report from the EURO NCAP, frontal and side impacts at 50km/h, revealed severe safety problems for all four cars.

The vehicles were scored primarily on data from crash dummies but penalties were also given for poor performance of the structure or restraints. The Ligier and the Tazzari had major failings of their restraint systems in the frontal test. In the Ligier, the upper connection of the driver’s seatbelt pulled out of the structure, leaving the dummy unrestrained and leading to a high risk of injury.

In the Tazzari, the driver seatbelt broke and the driver’s head hit the steering wheel with a force that indicated a high risk of serious or fatal injury. The structure of the Club Car virtually collapsed in the frontal impact. The Renault Twizy - the only vehicle of the four tested to have an airbag as standard - scored best but its stiff structure and restraint system resulted in some dangerously high dummy readings.



Read more here: Euro NCAP