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Comment by ramraj07 | Hacker News Reader

I'm in the market for a car in India, and the only thing making me queasy is the safety standards - as in I have no idea what they are. Somehow I can't really trust the Indian government to uphold standards given the level of corruption I've grown up accustomed to. Hence, a brand fully made in India, and hence without exposure to more reliable (European?) Safety standards makes me queasy.

That doesn't mean a VW in India is made to the same standards as it is in Europe, either. What's the best out?

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>That doesn't mean a VW in India is made to the same standards as it is in Europe

The discriminatory quality of International brands for their products in India has been the norm since globalisation started in the country, be it Colgate toothpaste or Ford Fiesta, most of it boils down to manufacturer building locally what the market is willing to pay.

The opposite is true as well, our export products from fruits to vehicles are of superior quality than what is available for local consumers. Again , it's w.r.t what the market is willing to pay.

I regret that the safety standards on vehicles in the country are appalling, at-least things started to change last year with Tata & Mahindra cars getting good ratings in GLOBAL NCAP[1] for the first time. I hope the COVID impact on the automobile sector, doesn't revert the progress.

I presume this is the case with all the developing economies.

[1]http://www.globalncap.org/results/

Well, I do think the companies discriminate. They sell whatever is feasibly in the market and within the limits of the law. India has pretty bad roads and average speed in cities are often slower than bikes speeds in Mountain view so many Indian cars do not really need airbags and various other safety mechanisms not to mention lower value of life itself.

You do get top notch, safe vehicles as well, it is just that most Indians dont consider the marginal safety worth the price.

To add another perspective, I purchased a Maruti car in India about 4 years ago. On paper every variant from the lowest to the top has an 'optional' version with airbags.

In practice, the waiting period for any variant with safety features other than the top speced would be "over 6 months, no gaurentees". ie: as a customer, I was forced to buy the top end variant -- with alloy wheels, chrome trim and all sorts of other crap which I did not care about because I wanted the safety features.

I think that maruti is using safety features as a way to upsell customers who care about safety. The difference isn't a "marginal cost". For some models, the difference is 30% the cost of the car.

No wonder it's so difficult to source good Tea in India.

I didn't think Tea of all things would be brought into this discussion, perhaps British?

Coincidently, my ancestors lived in tea plantation estates, worked under British longer than most of my country men until the estates were bought by the Tatas and Birlas.

So here are my two cents for good tea in India - You can get good tea in plantation estates at almost any outlet, but obviously great tea like anything else is of export quality and it's fairly easy to get if you know the right person in the tea factory at the estate. Fun fact, no tea sold in the market is 100% just tea, they are the mix of tea and lot of other stuff which shall remain unknown to enjoy a good cup of tea.

So, let me plug my favorite tea place, Sancha Tea Botique. I loved them when I was still in India.

As an aside, I once said to my uncle "there's no way I could drive in India, it's so chaotic". To which he replied "there's no way I could drive in England, there are too many rules"

Hah, I had a similar conversation with a taxi driver in Bolivia. What is most important for road safety, IMO is predictability. Everyone sharing a common expectation of what will happen next. The crazy-chaotic driving in a lot of countries actually has a lot of patterns which emerge at the level that you experience from the driving seat. And a lot of accidents, sure, but fewer than someone used to highly regulated driving would expect.

And fewer than they would probably cause themselves if transplanted directly in to the other system because of their mismatched expectations!

There are some threads on r/india about brake issues with Kia Celtos and Creta. Make sure you read it in case you are considering them.

https://old.reddit.com/r/india/comments/jd7x93/kia_seltos_an...

https://archive.vn/kNxEm

Depends on your budget as are all things in India .

Many car makers also do full imports and CKD units for some their lines in India.

If safety is your primary concern I would recommend a fully imported Volvo, while they don't have the Honda, ford or Suzuki kind of service depth , most major cities do have one. Parts occasionally need to be imported. While it may cost a bit more money and time, there is no hassle of paperwork for you.

If reliability is the primary decision point, there are plenty of choices depending on how much city/Highway/rural you want to do, also depends on size, power etc

Only issue is the insane price points of volvos and Audi's here due to the outrageous taxes. Double or triple the Indian makes (arguably not of same features, of course, but still) Is just too much

I have never seen any political party in India having "tax reduction" as their stated goal. I think if someone makes such party, people will vote for it as taxes affect them directly or indirectly.

I sincerely hope not. Excessive taxation on luxury goods is one of the few ways we can still milk the rich (me included), that's something I can stand behind. I just wish the economy cars were also rated with more reliable safety standards

>Excessive taxation on luxury goods is one of the few ways we can still milk the rich

You'll be able to milk rich if there are more mercedes on road, they'll need more repairmen or mechanics, you can be one and charge them for everything.

Right now in India, ultra rich proportionally pay less taxes because of various instruments available to them which aren't feasible to be used by middle class people.

We should shift our focus and let them spend their money, it will end up in one of the countrymen's pocket either way.

The (income) tax base in India is about 5%; they have no voice in the politics of the country unless they are big corps.

In fact, in many ways India can already be said to have UPI. "Farmers" (verified or not, typically rural) have free electricity, fertilizer subsidy, regular loan waivers, ... which were instituted as compensation for a broken market that benefit political cronyism.

This also has the 'benefit' of laundering bribes, without taxes - indeed, a joke about the family of previous Chief Minister of Karnataka (capital: Bengaluru) was that they grew gold in their farms!

>The (income) tax base in India is about 5%; they have no voice in the politics of the country unless they are big corps.

Excise on petroleum import affects nearly everyone. I am not only talking about income tax.

Other than this, the soap or detergent or even everyday products we use, contain imported active ingredients and they are taxed at some duty which brings up its price, manufacturer simply adds their own profit margin on top of their costs and passed it onto customers.

Even if most in India have never made payment to customs department, they've still paid considerable sum as indirect duty charged included into product pricing.

If you can just show it to people how much cheaper things will get, they'll give you a chance. This is because Indian voter is very unsophisticated, he will buy your promise atleast once to see if you can really help them by reducing prices.

> I think if someone makes such party, people will vote for it as taxes affect them directly or indirectly.

2 issues.

As stated in another comment, most of the income taxes / import taxes etc affect a tiny fraction of the population. Not really a huge voter base there. Influential and disproportionately powerful - but not enough to swing elections I think.

Also these taxes fund a huge number of programs that will need to be cut down or cancelled which will affect a lot of people (who don't necessarily make enough to pay income taxes). Not really something that any government can do in good conscience if they want to hold power.

>As stated in another comment, most of the income taxes / import taxes etc affect a tiny fraction of the population. Not really a huge voter base there. Influential and disproportionately powerful - but not enough to swing elections I think

How can this be true? Nearly everyone needs petrol or diesel or gas, and government has increased exise duty on petroleum import which affects almost everyone in the country!

And custom duties also affect others, today if you go to buy a tool - you'll either find Chinese import or some very expensive foreign make tool or crap Indian make tool in most of the case. People need those tools, they'll benefit from low import duties.

Yes but most people aren't aware how taxes affect them even if they aren't directly paying any custom duty or income tax, custom duty is being charged to them indirectly (they pay for a product where the importer adjusts the price according to costs of which custom duty is a part)

The global prices of fuel globally has dropped significantly over the last decade however the domestic prices have not really dropped.

Also the prices of fuel directly affects only vehicle owners who are tiny part of the population. It affects everyone else a lot only indirectly, so people don't really complain.

European cars are made for Autobhans and American cars are made to share roads with hummers, icy roads.

Most traffic in India is very speed limited, there is no snow or ice in most parts of India.

Many of the safety concerns are perhaps overblown given the very different driving scenario. A bigger problem would be your actual driving skills, unless you take the national highways regularly travelling long distances.

But there are cows, people on the road, overloaded trucks with drivers hopped up on drugs, etc. I agree you're unlikely to die in a traffic accident (as a driver/passenger, at least) during the day in any of the perennially clogged metros, but the highways and expressways sprouting up are another story.

I once took a cab from DEL to Gurgaon. The driver drove up an offramp of the (then) NH-8, along the shoulder against the flow of incoming traffic, and then exited via an onramp. And then they were surprised that I didn't tip them despite this efficient shortcut.

There's also that 'famous' story about a non-Indian manufacturer that under-tested horn cycles: scratching their heads wondering why so many were coming in with failed horns (or whatever specific piece), turns out they truly were getting used more than whatever number of activations they were spec'd to.

(It may be apocryphal, but fun story/business lesson (think that's where I heard it) regardless. Edit if I find it.)

I know in my last trip to India at least one of my drivers had a button on the dash for the horn - presumably because the original had broke

At least half of the Ghanaian taxis we rode in had re-wired the horn to the high-beam stalk-pull. That way, one need not take hands off the wheel to actuate the horn (and I suspect the steering-wheel-center horn switch had broken).

You get a wide mix of vehicles in Europe too.

I was once a passenger in a car going fairly fast on a two lane autobahn. A Trabant [1] in front started trying to overtake a truck at the same time that a Porsche 911 doing probably 250km/h was coming up behind us. Nobody hit anything else but it came fairly close.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trabant

What ?! Driving on undivided two-lane highways is one of scariest things one can do!

"A woman will buy anything she thinks the store is losing money on" --Kin Hubbard (b. 1868)

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

VWs available in India are far safer than Japanese cars, if for no reason other than the all steel construction. VWs are heavy too; you'll need more than one person to push if the battery runs out and you have to push start it. You'll have seen plenty of wrecked Japanese cars on Indian roads; they collapse like empty aluminium cans. The post-crash VWs I've seen in India have at least had intact cabins.

I suppose all cars are supposed to crush like aluminum cans in their crumple zones, just the cabin needs to stay intact. But good point, I might try to find a scrap yard just to stroll around and see this pattern!

Fake news. Battery does not run out on VW.

Cheap and unsafe cars are also made of steel. Steel is a cheap material and there are many different types of it, of varying strengths.

A car being made entirely out of a strong material does not necessarily make it safe, either. Modern vehicles with good safety ratings are made out of many different types of material of various strengths in different locations. https://www.media.volvocars.com/global/en-gb/media/photos/34...

Like any engineering project, design is more important than materials used.

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