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Euro NCAP believes car brands should not be raising prices with the inclusion of more advanced safety features to ace crash testing.
Euro NCAP has hit back at critics, often car brands, using advanced safety as an excuse to increase vehicle prices, stating it has always had cost in mind when laying out star-rating criteria.
When asked by Drive if it agreed with manufacturers using Euro NCAP as an excuse to raise pricing, secretary-general Michiel van Ratingen said: “I don’t really know whether that’s the case.”
“Of course, costs are a very important aspect of the whole discussion and we should be really aware of that,” van Ratingen said.
“If you look at our roadmap for 2026, and also 2029, you will see that we have taken a slightly different approach compared to the previous 10 years, where it was really about putting equipment on the car.
“We now think there are a lot of sensors already on the car, but what is lacking is that they work together and optimise against full protection.
“The roadmap that we currently have, and is basically driven on this comment about cars getting too expensive, let’s work together and get more out of what we already have – that’s kind of the message behind this.
“Of course, with a lot of the safety technology being software dependent, it also becomes more easy to actually make progress without adding hardware costs to the vehicle.
“We should be very conscious about cost, and we are – it’s a very big driver for our discussions every time.
“But again, I think there are still use improvements that we can think about just considering what’s already on the vehicle, just working in a smarter way.”
In the past, brands like Mazda, Hyundai, and Toyota have increased pricing of models alongside the introduction of more advanced safety technology – though the two are often difficult to directly connect due to other vehicle updates, fluctuating currency exchange rates, and rising logistics costs.
For example, the Mazda 2 has increased around $5500 to $20,990 before on-road costs in an update in 2019 that added a suite of safety systems as standard – alongside other tech and spec changes.
Similarly, across the entire industry, prices have increased with the inclusion of safety technologies such as autonomous emergency braking (AEB), lane-keep assist, rear cross-traffic alert, and blind-spot monitoring.
However, van Ratingen argues the opposite should be true, and that prices should come down as economies of scale mean the more cars that feature the technologies, the less it should cost the manufacturer.
“Democratise it, make sure that every manufacturer has it, that sort of leads to the price to come down a lot,” van Ratingen said.
“Often, it’s a question of do they see the value of bringing it in, if it’s recognised in the star-rating system, it’s another incentive to actually go this way even though its expensive in the beginning.
“But they know that now, “I invested in this technology, I can get these extra points that models don’t have’.
“So that’s kind of the role that Euro NCAP Plays, to make sure that there is a reason to consider it beyond just the road safety applications because we know that’s often not a game-changer in the industry.
“We are there basically to create an extra incentive.”
Tung Nguyen has been in the automotive journalism industry for over a decade, cutting his teeth at various publications before finding himself at Drive in 2024. With experience in news, feature, review, and advice writing, as well as video presentation skills, Tung is a do-it-all content creator. Tung’s love of cars first started as a child watching Transformers on Saturday mornings, as well as countless hours on PlayStation’s Gran Turismo, meaning his dream car is a Nissan GT-R, with a Liberty Walk widebody kit, of course.
