this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2023
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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.
The NCAP test advances over time so of course an older car would rate worse. NCAP updates its testing regime to incorporate safety functionality as it becomes mainstream, e.g. automatic emergency braking.
But these cars were tested against their peers in 2021, not older cars. This is not city car vs SUV but city car vs city car. The Dacia Spring, Jogger, Sandero and Renaul Zoe were the worst cars in the City / Supermini category. In the same year, that Dacia / Renault were scraping 0, 1 or 2 stars, Fiat 500e and Hyundai i20 were scoring 4 stars. I'd add that all the city cars tested in 2022 were also 4 or 5 star rating. It's actually funny in a way that the revamped Zoe scored worse than the original model for impact protection because they actually removed safety equipment.
So basically it's about Renault cheaping out on safety, nothing else. It's not acceptable. Maybe the driver / occupant are fine with the extra risk of injury or death in a collision. Doesn't mean the pedestrian / cyclist they hit was so on board with the idea.