While the Indian Government has said almost unanimously that autonomous driving cars will not be a feature on Indian roads. At the time, Minister of Road Transport & Highways Nitin Gadkari has cited the fact that many Indians drive for a living and that the entrance of autonomous cars will result in the loss of thousands, maybe even lakhs of jobs. That aside there are infrastructural problems too, autonomous cars, depend largely on proper road signs and clean lane markers to drive, the absence of these could send less than required information to the car and result in catastrophe. However, now the government is saying that 2022 will bring new mandates for minimum safety on all vehicles in India that will include some modicum of autonomous safety features.
As part of an ongoing mission to make Indian roads and highways safer, the government has said that they will mandate some autonomous safety features that will be mandated as early as 2022. This will include very basic level-1 autonomy like Autonomous braking assist, Lane assists and Electronic stability control, will try to use machine intervention to bring down the number of accidents on roadways and increase protection for vulnerable road users like cyclists and two-wheeler riders. This will effectively be the second phase of the newer government ordinances towards safety. The first of which will come in effect this April. According to this bikes under the 125 cc mark will require to have a combined braking system while bikes above this mark will require at least a single channel ABS system.
At present, the government is still considering to what extent these safety features can be implemented without negatively affecting the price and concurrently sales of any vehicles in their segment. Our understanding leads to believe that at present these autonomous technologies might not be scalable to a level such that it is within the reach of the mass-market. We expect more clarity on the next phases after the launch of the initial phases later this year. Stay tuned for more on this!