Shockingly bad NCAP score for the Zoe
Discussion
Mr Miata said:
monthou said:
I wonder how many stars our mk1 Focus or 107 would get in today's test.
Actually I don't, I just drive them.
A friend of mine had a Triumph Spitfire. Nice looking car but the interior felt that if you hit a wall of cardboard boxes the car would implode.Actually I don't, I just drive them.
I can see why the crash tests evolve over time. What was considered adequate back then probably is behind the technology curve today,
Evanivitch said:
72 kWh battery, £28.5k for a family sized car. Some of the lease deals have been incredibly cheap.
Are we going to pretend the medium family SUV market is full of great looking cars?
Quite. I've bought one as in terms of £ to range its one of, if not the best value vehicles out there. Kit isn't too bad either and I can charge it for free. Are we going to pretend the medium family SUV market is full of great looking cars?
It won't go round corners well, it's not the best looking or fastest but as a tool it fits my needs almost exactly.
The ZS EV is where my money would go if I was after a new family car now. The old one was pretty good with a few caveats, for the facelift they seem to have taken the novel approach of listening to what their customers want and fixing the issues people complained about. 
Max_Torque said:
It's also worth noting that most people who find the Driver Assistance systems annoying find them annoying because they are in fact, TERRIBLE drivers. Poor steering, poor road positioning, sudden braking, all things that trigger DAS to interviene. And of course, day in, and day out, DAS systems prevent accidents and mitigate the severity of accidents that occur to normal people. Thing is, you don't see posts on facebook that say "hey, my car just saved my life because i was driving terribly and not paying attention"...........
This is definitely true, but the other part of it is that so many of these systems do not work well enough in the real world. For example the latest Honda Jazz has a road departure warning system which is meant to intervene when it thinks you are about to leave your lane unexpectedly. Great! Unfortunately it gets confused on roads where recent roadworks have left lane-shaped marks in the road (e.g. black lines where they have painted out the temporary markings), and actively tries to steer you all over the road. Similarly, it gets confused with narrow country lanes where one has to straddle the lane markings as part of making progress, and actively tries to steer you into whatever is at the side of the road.My previous car (Toyota) had the same problem but it was possible to turn the lane departure stuff off permanently. With the newer stuff it is not.
The previous Jazz had a problem where if you approached a bend with a building on it, at perfectly reasonable speeds, the car would brake hard because it thought you were going to go into the building instead of around the bend.
In these situations the safety aids are annoying, not because the driver is terrible but because they are frankly more dangerous than having no intervention at all. And I consider that the Japanese do this stuff better than most.
I would much rather have these assistance systems than not, but they are still annoying in some situations, and can be safely-negative.
Back on the topic: I wonder if NCAP is at risk of becoming discredited as a meaningful standard. I can see some manufacturers deciding to not bother with it any more because they will feel - rightly or wrongly - that the scores are giving a misleading impression to the public and are driving up prices. I think that Dacia (also part of Renault) said something along these lines recently.
jason61c said:
you just don't get it then do you.
take a 3 year old car, with a '5 star' test result. test it today, maybe 1 or 2 star? or zero.
Don't kid yourself.
take a 3 year old car, with a '5 star' test result. test it today, maybe 1 or 2 star? or zero.
Don't kid yourself.
NCAP don't move the goalposts that quickly The ZOE has gone from hero to zero because they've removed safety equipment from the baseline as well as failing to significantly improve other aspects of the design. This isn't just a matter of the tests becoming more difficult.
jason61c said:
Evanivitch said:
People with something to lose.
you just don't get it then do you.take a 3 year old car, with a '5 star' test result. test it today, maybe 1 or 2 star? or zero.
Don't kid yourself.
I’d also be interested to see if the insurance companies now rate the less safe Zoe in a higher insurance group than the older safer Zoe.
Evanivitch said:
Welshbeef said:
I’d also be interested to see if the insurance companies now rate the less safe Zoe in a higher insurance group than the older safer Zoe.
I doubt it. Insurers would have already considered the equipment levels and injury risk.Hence why the Swedish insurer statistics more useful. There may be similar stats held by UK insurers.
The Rotrex Kid said:
Evanivitch said:
NCAP don't move the goalposts that quickly Anything 10+ years old is going to struggle though. Our mk2 Octavia would certainly get zero stars today.
Edited by kambites on Sunday 12th December 08:45
AmitG said:
Max_Torque said:
It's also worth noting that most people who find the Driver Assistance systems annoying find them annoying because they are in fact, TERRIBLE drivers. Poor steering, poor road positioning, sudden braking, all things that trigger DAS to interviene. And of course, day in, and day out, DAS systems prevent accidents and mitigate the severity of accidents that occur to normal people. Thing is, you don't see posts on facebook that say "hey, my car just saved my life because i was driving terribly and not paying attention"...........
This is definitely true, but the other part of it is that so many of these systems do not work well enough in the real world. For example the latest Honda Jazz has a road departure warning system which is meant to intervene when it thinks you are about to leave your lane unexpectedly. Great! Unfortunately it gets confused on roads where recent roadworks have left lane-shaped marks in the road (e.g. black lines where they have painted out the temporary markings), and actively tries to steer you all over the road. Similarly, it gets confused with narrow country lanes where one has to straddle the lane markings as part of making progress, and actively tries to steer you into whatever is at the side of the road.My previous car (Toyota) had the same problem but it was possible to turn the lane departure stuff off permanently. With the newer stuff it is not.
The previous Jazz had a problem where if you approached a bend with a building on it, at perfectly reasonable speeds, the car would brake hard because it thought you were going to go into the building instead of around the bend.
In these situations the safety aids are annoying, not because the driver is terrible but because they are frankly more dangerous than having no intervention at all. And I consider that the Japanese do this stuff better than most.
I would much rather have these assistance systems than not, but they are still annoying in some situations, and can be safely-negative.
Back on the topic: I wonder if NCAP is at risk of becoming discredited as a meaningful standard. I can see some manufacturers deciding to not bother with it any more because they will feel - rightly or wrongly - that the scores are giving a misleading impression to the public and are driving up prices. I think that Dacia (also part of Renault) said something along these lines recently.
Some people devoutly believe in tech while simultaneously devoutly believing everyone around them is thicker than them. This will tend to cloud their reality.
Lane assist tech is extremely intrusive and distracting in environments such as the centre of London and country lanes where you are often specifically putting the left hand side of your car very close to an inanimate object in order to simply progress safely and practically. Having your car attempt to fight that conscious act is an irritation.
Annoyingly, both in London and the Cotswolds what it seems to be doing is pushing less competent drivers out more into the path of oncoming traffic which the system hasn't noted while it is trying to push the driver away from the side of the road due to a belief that that is where the hazard is.
It's a bit of tech that in a lab seems really good as who wouldn't want a bad or absentminded driver who crosses the centre markings to be encouraged back where they belong but out in the real world has ramifications that bedroom engineers and IT types struggle to comprehend.
At this moment in time it is the type of safety tech that isn't very intelligent but devoutly believes itself to be a genius. Good on paper, good lots of the time, especially in simplistic environments but a very long way from being genuinely good.
saaby93 said:
Evanivitch said:
Welshbeef said:
I’d also be interested to see if the insurance companies now rate the less safe Zoe in a higher insurance group than the older safer Zoe.
I doubt it. Insurers would have already considered the equipment levels and injury risk.Hence why the Swedish insurer statistics more useful. There may be similar stats held by UK insurers.
A closer description would be that a syndicate would simply apply a basic set of stats for that type of car and the type of customer who uses it then head off to the pub. All other syndicates will save time by copying the first one then joining them in the pub. At a later date if one of them notices higher claims coming in than expected they will fudge an adjustment in or if they need to get back to the pub just quickly delete that particular car from their list.
Most of the time the pricing is determined by the number of syndicates competing for safe premiums and when prices rise it's because syndicates are pulling out leaving fewer and the more high risk syndicates who charge more.
DonkeyApple said:
Lane assist tech is extremely intrusive and distracting in environments such as the centre of London and country lanes where you are often specifically putting the left hand side of your car very close to an inanimate object in order to simply progress safely and practically. Having your car attempt to fight that conscious act is an irritation.
(my bold)Us engineers full understand the "irritation" of DAS.
But let me ask this, just how "irritating" would it be to have your child run over and killed by an inattentive driver?
And that's the point, yes DAS can cause irritation,but it also prevents and mitigates against serious injury and death, and in the real world, yes every day it irritates some drivers, but on that same day it prevents other incidents from even happening, incidents that carry far more emotional weight and stress.
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