A Moment Of Thought
As previously mentioned, safety is a feature that no one really looks for in our market, but everyone needs it. That is where the root of this issue lies. Products are merely a mirror of consumers’ demands. Good selling products, even more so! If the consumer changes his/her demand, so will the products.
Safety is clearly not a priority for the average consumer. There are only two cars under 15 lakhs in the market that offer 7 airbags- the Mahindra XUV300, and the Toyota Yaris. Both of these cars are not topping their respective segments, in fact, the Yaris recorded three-digit sales numbers last month. Take the example of Toyota, again. The Toyota Etios Liva is quite a safe car with 4-stars, does not sell as well as the badge-engineered Toyota Glanza. Understandably, safety tech is quite expensive now, but with wider adaptation, the dream of an entry-level car having 6-airbags could soon become true.
But this situation is slowly changing for the better. With ABS and EBD now standard on almost every car, and a driver airbag slowly making its way into budget cars, the future does not look bleak. But it would certainly be nicer if the big guns like Hyundai and Maruti focused more on safety in budget cars. Maruti nearly has a 50% market share in passenger car sales and can bring a big change in the market if they want to. You can compare this to the situation in the tech world. When Apple removed the headphone jack in their iPhones in 2017, a myriad of companies followed suit at a blistering pace. While the magnitude is ridiculously larger here and removing a feature is not the same as adding, a tide can definitely be created.
