India marks a significant milestone in the automotive industry with the launch of the Bharat New Car Assessment Programme, which is set to rate the safety standards of vehicles. The programme will go live from October 1, 2023, and will test M1 category vehicles up to 3.5 tonnes.
The BNCAP was launched by Nitin Gadkari, Minister, MoRTH, alongside other industry experts and David Ward, the Executive President of Towards Zero Foundation. The BNCAP is purely voluntary at the moment, and the programme has received over 30 cars to be tested.
The BNCAP programme will rate cars based on the safety provided to adult occupancy and child occupancy. The tests will be performed with crash dummies and will monitor four crucial areas and the safety of each. The BNCAP tests will also rate the safety features of cars.
Only base models of cars will be tested under BNCAP and to qualify for three stars and above, the cars must be fitted with ESC as standard. Those with optional ESC will be rated two stars, depending on how they perform.
The BNCAP is based on Global NCAP and Euro NCAP protocols and as per David Ward, “Each protocol around the world usually is updated every four or five years. So we’ll see how it all evolves. But we’re very happy that the starting point is building on the success of a project we’ve run for the last 10 years.”
The launch of BNCAP is a significant milestone in India as this allows automakers and component makers to innovate and come up with cost-effective safety features. Also, speaking about costs, the average cost of testing vehicles under Global NCAP is around Rs 2.5 crore while the same is cut down to Rs 60 lakh with BNCAP.
Also, the BNCAP initiative will evolve as the automotive industry grows and tests will be specific to EVs and alternate fuel vehicles in the future. Also, as proposed, larger passenger carriers such as buses will be tested in the future.