General Motors has made the announcement it will phase out vehicles in developing markets that lack airbags. The announcement came after the latest Latin NCAP tests, where the Chinese-built Chevrolet Sail earned zero stars.
The organization stated the Sail was unstable, and also lacked three-point seat belts in all seating positions, according to The Detroit Free Press. The Chevy Sail rings in at only $10,000, but at a cost for buyers.
The Sail isn’t the only vehicle, and Chevrolet isn’t the only automaker guilty of poor safety standards in these markets. The Aveo, Spark and Agile all received zero stars as well. Hyundai, Nissan, Fiat and Renault, among others, have also received zero stars in their vehicles.
GM will follow Volkswagen, Honda and Toyota in assembling vehicles with minimum safety standards for the Latin American market, even after GM CEO Mary Barra argued for the continued sale of vehicles without airbags because they’re more affordable for consumers.
The new cars will start appearing in the 2019 model year, the company said.
“GM shares the goal of improving road safety worldwide, including the adoption of basic auto safety standards in global markets and the phase-out of zero-star cars,” the company said in a statement
Comments
This may be about platforms more than anything else.
2019 seems to be when the Sail switches to G2XX. And it might be costly in supply chains and platform development, to continue to maintain a series of steering wheels and seatbelts that lack the communized safety standards. I don’t even know if G2XX had ever planned to support two-point seatbelt for anything other than the fifth seat.
Certainly at a minimum, the profit margins would shrink at that platform pivot.
Apologies for the typo… I meant to say commonized. Not communized.