Comment by alkonaut | Hacker News Reader

Comment by alkonaut | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand the issue here, cars sold in Europe already include many US cars obviously, and cars that sell in Europe are usually safety tested, for example by Euro NCAP. Here is a US car available in Europe, that has an excellent five star safety score in NCAP http://www.euroncap.com/en/results/jeep/cherokee/8871

Now if "research actually established that American models are much less safe when it comes to front-side collisions" then those differences presumably apply to US models that aren't currently sold in Europe, and thus have never been tested here. If a model eventually will be sold in Europe (in any numbers) it will presumably be tested in Europe too, and those safety differences would show up in the tests?

It doesn't worry me that some new car is approved for sale while not being safe, I wouldn't buy it until I see five Euro NCAP stars, and that I think goes for most European consumers. Relaxing the approval wouldn't change the testing! If US manufacturers want to sell cars in Europe they will have to not meet regulations but satisfy NCAP.

(That said: cars like the new mustang might never be tested in NCAP, nor will it have to to compete with European performance cars which often aren't tested either, or score poorly. Performance car buyers don't seem very safety concerned so crashing expensive cars that sell in small numbers doesn't seem worthwhile).

I might be wrong but it seems the point of the TTIP is to say "Ok our norms are equivalent in the US and EU, so a US car does not need to pass EuroNCAP to be sold in Europe"

Or rather we would align EuroNCAP on less demanding american norms, which would have the same result. A five star EuroNCAP post-TTIP would not be equivalent to a 5 star pre-TTIP.

EuroNCAP isn't a regulatory thing, and it isn't mandatory, it's basically just publicly fundded consumer information. Even if more models are allowed to be sold because they pass new "harmoinized" (read: relaxed) safety regulations after TTIP, they won't sell unless they score high on NCAP. (Specialty models like pickups, performance cars likely not that sensitive, but regular passenger cars and SUV's definitely would sell poorly without a high NCAP score). A US manufacturer knows this.

I don't think (at least I hope) that NCAP would ever relax their testing procedures. Rather, they make it stricter every year, as they should.

Thanks for the clarification. In my mind, it was mandatory.

Sounds like the EU versions of US cars are currently re-engineered to meet EU standards, and that costs manufacturers money. They're trying to save that cost by saying all rules are equivalent. From the article:

> under current rules cars sold globally, such as the Ford Focus or Volkswagen Golf, must still be re-engineered multiple times - at considerable expense to manufacturers - to satisfy crash-test standards around the world

I'm totally fine with homogenizing safety standards across the world. But it has to be done by lifting the lower standards up to the higher level, not the other way around.

What you have to remember is that those European Chrysler efforts like the Jeep are not made in America. They are made by Magna Steyr in Austria alongside plenty of other SUV's - the BMW ones and the Mercedes ones have been made in the same OEM/contract facility over the years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Steyr

Yes. But it's probably not because they are manufactured here that it gets 5 stars in NCAP. Surely it's because they know that if they want to actually sell any Jeeps, they better have 5 stars?

The same would be true for an american 2016 SUV that isn't available in Europe today, if they want to launch it in Europe.

I believe the US manufacturer would either change it to achieve 5 stars, or make an EU model that gets 5 stars, or just not sell it in the EU. And that is regardless of whether the regulations are relaxed so that it could be sold as-is in Europe!

This is not true anymore.

The KL (current Cherokee) is made in Toledo OH USA, even those sold in Europe. The most common engine for EU markets is made in Italy though. Magna Steyr has not made a Jeep for something like five years and never this current generation.

For that Cherokee the inflator for driver is different in the US v EU models. I believe that Arc manufactures them and they get used in the same Delphi and KSS housings to this day. The passenger unit is different though even noticeably externally. There are also regulatory differences pertaining to the seat sensor operation. Basically it costs money to do all this twice.

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