Renault Zoe NCAP crash rating: zero stars [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

Renault Zoe NCAP crash rating: zero stars [pdf]

cdn.euroncap.com

66 pointsTomte97 comments

An article clearing it up a bit: https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/renault-zoe-give...

Matthew Avery, Euro NCAP board member and chief research and strategy officer at Thatcham, told Autocar: “Every few years, Euro NCAP raises the bar by introducing new tests which either exploit new technologies or lift the hurdle to make manufacturers do better. If everyone is five-star, we need to lift the barrier."

As a result of these alterations, he explained: “When we first tested the Zoe, it did reasonably well and had all the elements you needed back then to get a reasonable score. But if you've still got the same design 10 years later, you aren't going to score as well.”

"The Zoe was launched in 2013 and received 5 stars with Euro NCAP protocol at that time. The Euro NCAP protocol has since 2013 undergone five changes. With the same equipment, a model can lose up to two stars in each protocol change.

I was not aware how quickly and dramatically the tests change, it makes comparison between different models almost useless unless you read through entire test protocols.

What’s interesting is how the other makers still keep a decent score through the years. In Zoe’s case it seems they really optimized for the 2013 tests and had nothing to show for the more challenging tests.

Also consider that the new NCAP ratings aren't about real safety. You can only get a maximum of 3 starts if you don't include nanny systems like lane assist, front assist, side assist, auto braking. For me this makes the NCAP rating useless as i don't care about such systems and would prefer a car that doesn't have them. I'd happily drive a 0 star Zoe.

Lane assist can be seen as a quality of life improvement, but wouldn’t auto braking be a purely safety feature, with 100% life saving potential ?

Also 3 stars doesn’t look bad to me if you meet the bare minimum standard. I mean, it’s fine and people will look at the prices to compare anyway.

My car has lane assist but it makes life worse because it doesn't recognize how lanes are used in this country. In the countryside on certain roads you are supposed to cross over the dashed line so it just keeps dinging at you until you disable the system. Side assist flashes bright leds in your eyes whenever a car is in your deadspot which is all the time on the motorway. The car needs to tell you whenever the temperature crosses over 4c. It likes to warn you that the tire pressure has changed when it is absolutely fine when you test it. I suppose auto braking is the only one actually useful.

Only if the auto-braking works perfectly. If it ever auto-brakes when it shouldn't have there's a good chance of it causing more risk than if it hadn't been there at all.

btw. aeb systems are basically working perfectly that they are mandatory in new cars in europe starting in 2022? (btw. lane-keeping assistance and warning of driver drowsiness are mandatory as well in 2022)

I suspect that's what happened to my mother. She was caught in a pile-up when a car suddenly braked hard for no reason: straight line, no obstacles, full visibility. The front driver said (honestly or not) that he didn't understand why his car did that.

The good news is that her passive safety systems worked fine and she came out unharmed except for minor burns and bruises caused by the airbag.

I've also experienced unwanted braking in cars with an auto-brake system. Nether in a situation where it could be dangerous, thankfully, but it is clear that the system is not 100% reliable.

Auto-braking systems only operate a low speeds (below 15mph I think).

There’s also the emergency brake assist systems that do operate a speed. They use front facing radar to detect objects you might be about to collide with, and increase the brake pressure assistance, so you still need to physically press the brake. But if the car thinks you won’t stop in time, then it’ll multiply your break input to try and bring the car to a holt fast enough. But, you need to provide the initial brake input, they won’t fire alone.

> but wouldn’t auto braking be a purely safety feature, with 100% life saving potential ?

No, what if it auto-brakes at the wrong time and you get rear-ended due to the person behind you not expecting a brake spike out of nowhere?

>>For me this makes the NCAP rating useless

That's fine, and fortunately for you, you can still buy and operate that vehicle legally, it's fine. However you might and should expect the insurance on it to be appropriately higher than a 5-star rated vehicle.

>>Also consider that the new NCAP ratings aren't about real safety.

That's exactly what they are about, just because you don't care about those systems doesn't mean they are not about safety. If you didn't care about airbags that wouldn't suddenly make the test that requires them "not about safety".

Lane assist, gives false sense of security for some people. So these assistance systems can be a double edged sword.

That's like saying that ABS gives you a false sense of security because you can stop in situations you wouldn't be able to otherwise - but obviously the solution isn't to get rid of ABS, it's to learn where the limit of the system is.

Lane assist isn’t lane centering, it doesn’t keep your car in the middle of the lane, and just applies a small steering input if you drift out of lane.

The systems tend to be quite noisy and annoying, and also won’t keep you in lane by themselves, and they normally result in the car “ping-ponging” between the lane markers until the system gives up and stops applying input. There is nothing about these systems that would cause to actual rely on them, they’re simply too annoying and uncomfortable.

Unsafe things are frequently cheaper to insure. Ever insured a motorcycle or an older car? The size of the typical claim might have something to do with it.

Passive safety (after you crash) can only go so far. Active safety (not crashing) can protect you far better.

You’ll never make a consumer vehicle that can protect its occupants in a 100mph head-on collision with a semi truck. But you can make a vehicle that turns that crash into a 40mph collision with minor injuries or even avoids it completely.

I rented a car recently that would steer back into the lane if you went over the line. It was great. Would definitely save my life if I fell asleep on a long roadtrip and started drifting.

How falling asleep while driving is even possibility. If you feel tired stop and rest.

Yeah and if you need to text, stop. But people don't.

Because you can't enforce every rule in practice. There's a chance it will creep up on up on a long drive and you don't notice. There's a chance you pass out suddenly or something else happens that prevents you from steering - same system should kick in. And finally, even if you behave perfectly, it's in your interest that the person coming from the other side does have such system.

It makes sense if you consider that EuroNCAP cares about safety for everyone, not just the people inside the car. I also drive a car lacking all the auto assists common in new cars, I'm confident in my own skills and I have a nice track record of no crashes ever, but at any time, I'm just one distraction away from an incident. Cars with crash prevention features are much safer on the road, for its occupants and for everyone around them.

I wish there was some mechanism the EuroNCAP together with the EU could use to make SUVs semi-banned. I’ve heard so many people who buy those kinds of cars say “well at least if I get into a crash I will be okay since I have the bigger car”, which is a disgusting attitude since it implies that they expect the other car to be smaller and are okay with hurting that other person as long as they have an X% more chance to get through it with minor injuries only.

Not only that, since they're heavier a crash into a person at the same speed will be more devastating even ignoring the higher impact position.

They are also more prone to roll, which dispenses with the "well I'm safer!", and have been shown to cause far more fatalities and life-changing injuries when involved in multi-car pile ups.

That's before we even get to the ecological cost (initial construction and then keeping it running), European infrastructure that wasn't designed for cars of that size etc. etc. etc.

Is any car small enough that the ratio of car-weight to human-weight becomes low enough to protect a human in the event of a crash? By the time a human body has managed to significantly change the momentum of the car, I would expect the damage to be done.

The real question, I would think, is whether a larger car takes longer to brake to a stop than a smaller car, or do the quality of the brakes go up linearly with the weight of the car.

At standard speeds, braking is traction-limited: brakes have enough power to block the wheels. Usually, heavier cars also have wider tires and are still traction-limited when braking, and usually braking distances are about the same. SUVs make lots of tradeoffs, but stopping power isn't usually one of them.

On slippery roads these bigger tires don't work at all.

Do smaller tires work on slippery roads?

On snowy or wet roads, way better yea.

IIRC EuroNCAP already evaluates how a car behaves as a "crash partner", but I don't know how much (if any) this affects the final rating.

I don't understand this common sentiment people express online. You (and others who echo you) are absolutely entitled to your opinion. The source of the emotion is mysterious to me though.

Modern SUVs seem to be hatchbacks with very subtle styling differences and (checking the first example that comes to mind) something like 3.6 inches more ground clearance and 250 lbs additional weight. That is the difference between a Subaru CrossTrek and a Subaru Impreza.

Of course there are much bigger SUVs, but I'd think they're substituting for minivans which also are massive.

When I read something expressing visceral anger over huge SUVs, I imagine maybe they are a time traveler from decades ago, when an SUV was invariably a body-on-frame "light truck" that could be used for snowplowing.

For many years, I would see people sneering at Americans for not buying hatchbacks. Then Americans switched to crossovers that are really hatchbacks that are styled slightly differently. And apparently Europeans have followed suit. It's uncharitable of me, but I wonder if the real source of bile for some people is an instinctive hatred for any trend that follows the US, rather than Europe leading the way.

I have been hit by an SUV while driving a regular car, by the way, and indeed they sustained a lot less damage than I did. However, nobody was injured, so "being ok" is not necessarily about "hurting people".

Interesting, doesn't that penalize cheaper cars? I mean let's face it not everyone can afford a 50k Volvo or Tesla. And those systems are still very premium. Gonna take 10 years for it to trickle down.

The 2020 design is actually less safe than their 2013 design.

> a new seat-mounted side airbag that protects just the occupant's thorax, rather than the head and thorax as it did previously.

>>I was not aware how quickly and dramatically the tests change, it makes comparison between different models almost useless unless you read through entire test protocols.

Not really, you just need to make sure you compare a 2022 model with another 2022 model, not a 2022 model with a 2015 one for instance.

Similar thing was done recently with energy efficiency labelling in the EU - since the label was introduced almost every appliance on the market has managed to meet the most stringent label(A grade) so it was common to see say, dishwashers all rated A++++ or A++++++ or something equally stupid. So last year the labels got significantly revised, and the old A label became the new F or whatever, which led to quite a shock from some consumers who were unaware - normally you wouldn't buy say a tumble dryer with an F rating, but under the new system that's only as bad as the old A label.

Bough appliances this summer and there was a mix between the old and the new system all over the appliance stores!

This seems like it’s designed to incentivize manufacturers to keep making (or overstock on) the old, higher-scoring (perhaps worse performing) model.

That's not how it works - if the model is currently being made, then it has to be re-labeled with the new system. The only instance when the stores are allowed to use the old label is if they literally still have old stock, but it should disappear from shelves pretty quickly.

As the label deadline is approaching, it would seem a large advantage to make an extra year’s worth of product and stuff the channel. Retailers would be happy to participate as they’d now have a higher margin “A rated” appliance to offer.

Nobody wants too keep stock. Everybody just builds the smallest warehouse that can get away with, and some places don't even have that.

That's part of the reason for all the supply issues right now.

The labels are slightly different. Consumers who pay attention can see that. The easiest way is to look for a QR code. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_energy_label)

The changes to EU energy efficiency labelling were a little different in that it was an active, stated goal that it should not be possible for manufacturers to achieve the top A rating in the near future and the criteria were set with the aim of achieving that. That is, the top rating is by design currently unattainable. I think changes to crash ratings generally target specific perceived deficiencies of current car safety that the testing organisations think manfacturers can and should fix.

Yeah that makes sense - it's the same in fuel efficiency actually. The new goal for 2022 is for manufacturers selling in the EU to have an overal fleet average of 50g of CO2/km, and that's just physically not possible with just a pure ICE car. Manufacturers have to transition either to full EVs or plug in hybrids at the very least, or they have to pay absolutely draconian fines for every gram of CO2/km over the limit. In that sense the norm is also higher than anything currently possible with existing technology(in terms of what a pure ICE car can do).

Iirc new ICE models will be banned in some countries as early as 2030.

There was a picture I saw on Twitter a while ago. The UK has apparently/obviously not adopted the new EU standard, so there was a photo of product packaging with 2 energy labels, one that says "valid for the UK", and the gadget had a B rating, and one valid for the EU, with a E rating...

I live in the UK, the new rating is definitely already here, seen it in shops and online.

As a simplest example - Bosch dishwasher, not long ago this was A+ rated, now it's E rated, at one of the biggest UK DYI stores:

https://www.diy.com/departments/bosch-smv2itx18g-integrated-...

Right, just bought a new TV and it came with an energy efficiency rating of F. Now it makes sense.

Lightbulbs too, even a 5.5 watt 470lm lightbulb has an F.

To be fair, 85 lumens per watt isn’t very good these days, or even compared to T8 CFL lamps (60 lumens per watt).

Efficient LED fixtures are putting out ~130 lumens per watt these days, some LED highbays are pushing 175-200 lumens per watt.

> almost every appliance on the market has managed to meet the most stringent label(A grade) so it was common to see say, dishwashers all rated A++++ or A++++++ or something equally stupid. So last year the labels got significantly revised, and the old A label became the new F or whatever

Y'know, this is why we invented ... numbers. Efficiency is not something that can be easily measured with a constant rating. Just let the number keep going up! Even people of below average intelligence can tell that a "1000" efficiency rating is better than an "800", even if a decade ago, manufacturers struggled to hit 100.

Or use some known units with it. However A-F grades also convey a good/bad that non knowledgeable people need. Is 7w.H per kg of washed clothes good for a washing machine? I don't know - but I know an A seems to be good for current models.

I could buy the case for a label with "A - 2018 rating" and the number with equally large text underneath it. The issue is just that the rating is often completely non-informative, unless you always buy the latest-year model of appliance.

In the US they stick a big label on appliances with the cost to run the device for a year. It makes it easier to compair.

Funny. I have a washing machine which depends on the amount of dirty laundry. How do they know how many people generate dirty laundry in my home ?

I seem to remember it's just assumed that the washing machine is filled up to x % of capactiy on average, and that this is also at least partially to blame for the disappearance of smaller washing machines [1] – bigger washing machines are more energy-efficient, assuming they're actually used to capacity. Because assumed usage simply scales with the machine's capacity, manufacturers can simply bump up capacities in order to make their machines appear more efficient, never mind how much people actually fill up those machines in practice.

[1] Our old washing machine had a capacity of something like 4 or 5 kg, which was perfectly fine for how we used it, but when we had to replace it a year or two ago, it was hard to find anything smaller than 7 or 8 kg.

Wow. That's really frustrating. It's kind of wild how difficult it is to properly tune standards to create the correct incentives. I wonder if this is the sort of problem that's just the result of profit-seeking by manufacturers, or whether it's the result of a more fundamental problem with simplifying complex issues like "efficiency" down to a single target.

>not a 2022 model with a 2015 one

Well, yeah, but that's an important type of comparison!

Obviously (?) people who are concerned about safety want to factor it in when deciding whether to exchange their car for a new one. You can't do it every year.

So if the different years have no particular quantitative relationship between ratings, then they're no help in that respect. "Better" and "worse" don't tell you how much in any way that indicates if it matters. This has a "5" rating and that has a "0" rating, so how many percent better is it?

You can read the summary pdf and see what the issues are and what is rewarded.

I could, but if it's qualitative, then is it actionable?

How can one make a decision without reducing the available information to a single ratio and a threshold?

I assume they're copying the EU's energy performance rankings, which were recently amended such that the IKEA LED spotlights that I have in my kitchen, which were A+ when I bought them, are now F. Very confusing.

There are certainly some weaknesses here, but from the commentary and initial skim of the results it seems odd to call this a 0-star safety rating. I'd be curious to see what a 1-, 2-, or 3-star safety rating looks like in comparison.

Update: Looking at the Euro NCAP star rating criterea[0], the primary reason this car was capped at 0 stars was its minimal safety assist features (14%, minimum for 1-star is 30%. While this balancing may make sense in other cases it seems odd in the case of active safety features. Is it really fair to call an otherwise perfect (though not in this case) car a 0-star death trap because it doesn't include driver monitoring (?) and radar?

[0] https://cdn.euroncap.com/media/67266/euro-ncap-assessment-pr...

Here's a 1-star electric vehicle for comparison:

https://cdn.euroncap.com/media/66949/euroncap-2021-dacia-spr...

Also, effectively a Renault.

Crash testing organizations have always been about advocacy. If you don't do what they find important, you get fewer stars and the negative attention that attracts.

There's always a balance in this approach. If the people buying the cars also want the things the advocacy group wants, the star ratings are relevant and useful; if they don't agree, the ratings aren't super useful and a 0-star rating doesn't kill sales. (Although, often a 8 year+ design tapers off in sales anyway)

I wonder how much this is lobby by the car industry to raise entry barriers. Maybe against cheap chinese producers?

A car that only cares about what happens during a crash is considered to have poor safety by the newest EuroNCAP standards. Cars that want to have good ratings must prevent crashes from happening. This includes things like lane departure assist and radar-assisted autobraking, but also systems like driver fatigue detection and after-crash autobraking.

I've had a recent fascination with the NCAP tests, and a lot of people aren't aware that they change almost yearly.

I saw this [1] recent video recently looking at some of the worst crash tests, and it really drills home that good safety is to do with a good design rather than the class of car. It's also a reminder of just how scary a 30mph collision is, especially at just the wrong angle. We had a death on the road I live on recently where a relatively modren Mercedes hit a tree. It happened in the early hours of the morning so I'm sure this was > 30mph collision, one dead and two in a critical state. It reminds you that at high speeds these tests don't mean that much.

I wonder if they will start to look at the rear seats more, especially for children. There is a high rate of serious head injury for children in anything other than the middle seat, and I feel this is something that is only starting to be looked at. Not to mention the 3rd row of seats doesn't seem to tested at all.

Another interesting point is that this testing is voluntary. There are some very expensive cars on the road that not tested!

[1] https://youtu.be/uFQkRpeC294

>It reminds you that at high speeds these tests don't mean that much.

That's a glass-half-empty outlook. Another way to look at it, is that when you're going 60, 70 mph, or more, nothing will save you, so you might as well drive anything you feel like, from a classic car with no airbags to a motorcycle.

And I don't doubt that Mercedes was going a lot faster than 30. I see people going at least 50 on city streets posted for 30 just to get in front for the next traffic light.

The irrationality displayed on my daily commute made me so excited for self-driving cars - it's a shame we're further away from that than I realised.

Yes, I alternate between a motorcycle and largish SUV to get to work. I had a hairy moment when my lane slowed suddenly from 70 > 20mph on the motorway. There was a car and a lorry in front of me, and car and lorry that looked like it was having trouble slowing behind me. To my right was a lane with a lorry doing 70 still, and to my left were barriers. For a split second I thought I was going to be crushed and there was nothing I could about it. Weirdly I fancied my chances better if I'd been on my bike as I could have moved to the side.

Don't know why this is a link to the PDF, the web page has the same information (although hidden behind all sorts of tabs and toggles you have to click):

https://www.euroncap.com/en/results/renault/zoe/44206

I think you just answered your own question ;-) .

Dan Luu's "How do cars fare in crash tests they're not specifically optimized for?" comes to mind. https://danluu.com/car-safety/

I find interesting to compare these results with those of a 4-star car hailing from 1999, which could now be considered a coffin-on-wheels. (I happen to own one, maybe I should consider getting a Zoe!)

https://cdn.euroncap.com/media/9749/euroncap_ford_focus_1999...

I don't think these ratings should be considered as absolutes, not can they be compared between years. Your car was a 4-star car when compared against other models introduced that year - if you were to replace it with another 1999 vehicle, you'd need to look for the same level of standards applied back then. But yeah, of course it's going to do worse against a 2022 model - but it doesn't automatically make it a coffin on wheels either.

Well, part of that is that crashing a 1999 Ford Focus into a 2021 Chevrolet Movie Theater will probably not be in the Focus' favour.

To note, Dacia Spring (also Renault group) got paned as well

https://www.euroncap.com/en/results/dacia/spring/44197

Dumb question, for a given model, how many cars are destroyed in such tests? Are they bought on the market or just gifted by the manufacturer?

Testing video

https://youtu.be/HiOs1mCMH4Q

0 star safety: Meeting type-approval standards so can legally be sold but lacking critical modern safety technology

Wikipedia

Rating system should always contain the year of the rating. It would help keep the context, basically if you show "5 stars 2013" -> "0 stars 2021", you understand that the tests has changed not the rating.

Zero!? How!? Also I don't understand what it has to do with the fact that this is an electric propulsion car, 4-5 star NCAP rating had been basically standard for years IIUC.

Have a look through recent NCAPs, there have been several 1-3 star ratings even in the last few years.

TIL the British spell curb (US) kerb.

We Brits still curb our enthusiasm. Kerbs are just the things on roads.

Is it possible to receive negative stars?

No - zero stars is still legally allowed to be sold. If it were to get below 0 stars, as in - actively unsafe - then it would not receive certification at all and not be allowed for sale(and in fact there were some cars that have been refused certification in the EU, some chinese designs that basically offered zero crumple zones and folded on themselves in a crash, that kind of thing)

All of these programmes, NCAP, EuroNCAP, and others like them around the world, are entirely advisory.

The government makes rules for what you can sell, but the safety standards involved are much less stringent than you'd see in these advisory programmes. In some cases the same test centres are used (since after all they have the equipment) but the tests done are way easier than for say EuroNCAP.

For example it has been years since the point where you weren't going to get anywhere in the advisory tests without airbags, but most places they aren't a legal requirement for new cars (there is often a rule saying they must work if they are fitted but no requirement to fit them).

The funding is very different. For your car to be legal to sell new (at volume) you must pass the government tests, including in many countries a single destructive (ie writes off the car) test, and the government won't pay for that. If, say, Volvo, decided it wasn't interested in the UK market now that they're non-EU, it needn't submit new Volvo models, and then such new models just can't be sold in the UK no matter how safe they obviously are.

In contrast the advisory tests are voluntary, often a manufacturer will pay for their products to be tested e.g. they might say to EuroNCAP, "We made a new mid-range family car, you can buy a basic model for about €40k so here's €40k" and then EuroNCAP buys a suitable model from a dealer (this avoid the scenario where a manufacturer ships the tester a specially hardened test vehicle) with their €40k and runs tests. But they don't have to pay, if Volvo decided they hate these tests, and won't pay for them, but they still provide cars for government tests, either the advisory test outfits buy the cars with their own funds or they don't test the Volvo models any more, but either way they are still legal to buy.

I mentioned above that volume matters because of destructive testing. If you build your own car, from scratch, in most places the government says OK, fine, nobody does that, and obviously it's probably a death trap, but clearly there's only one of these we can't very well destructively test that one, so long as you meet some very basic requirements (e.g. no ludicrously over-size vehicles, nothing that's obviously going to kill other road users) you can drive that, although you may not be allowed to sell it to anybody as a car.

Maybe the Saturday Night Live Lexon Paradox? (This is difficult to find the video online, probably due to the close name of Lexon vs Lexus.)

“another [team] designed it to shatter on impact, throwing passengers up to 300 yards.”

https://snltranscripts.jt.org/94/94bparadox.phtml

Zero stars - car body from paper?

I guess this will hit all electric vehicles at first. Due to the higher weight you will have more energetic collisions compared to fuel powered cars. Of course there are still differences by model.

Tesla Model 3: 5 stars

https://cdn.euroncap.com/media/55749/euroncap-2019-tesla-mod...

BMW iX: 5 stars

https://cdn.euroncap.com/media/67239/euroncap-2021-bmw-ix-da...

Jaguar I-Pace: 5 stars

https://cdn.euroncap.com/media/63559/euroncap-2018-jaguar-i-...

Nissan Leaf: 5 stars

https://cdn.euroncap.com/media/62961/euroncap-2018-nissan-le...

VW ID3: 5 stars

https://cdn.euroncap.com/media/64338/euroncap-2020-vw-id3-da...

VW ID4: 5 stars

https://cdn.euroncap.com/media/64335/euroncap-2021-vw-id4-da...

Hyundai Ioniq 5: 5 stars

https://cdn.euroncap.com/media/67127/euroncap-2021-hyundai-i...

Ford Mustang Mach-e: 5 stars

https://cdn.euroncap.com/media/65695/euroncap-2021-ford-must...

Renault Zoe 2013 model: 5 stars

https://www.euroncap.com/de/results/renault/zoe/8889

Yes - and using fairly different criteria, with little emphasis on things like pedestrian protection or various safety systems (like automatic emergency braking). Which is where the current model lost big time as those are not available for it (due to cost reasons - the car is so expensive already that fitting some sophisticated automation would make it unsellable).

I guess this is just more proof that the Mach-E is not a true Mustang: the Ford Mustang got 2/5 stars in 2017 and even after Ford changed the specs, it only got a 3/5.

Renault is known for making coffins with wheels

This is a ridiculous statement, 3 different Renault models from 2019 each score 5 stars on Euro NCAP tests and the Kangoo tested in 2021 tested at 4/5.

You should check the crap they sell in third world countries. Check latin ncap for example.

Not really, that's apples to oranges comparison comparing this to something like a Tesla, Ioniq or one of the large expensive electric SUVs. Something like Ioniq 5 is almost twice as big compared to a Zoe ...

Zoe is an urban supermini, only slightly bigger than a Smart or Twingo. And with minimal equipment (no expensive assistive systems) to bring the price down because otherwise it wouldn't be possible to sell it.

Zoe pricing starts at 32500€ (comparably or even larger sized Clio at about 15000€). It used to be possible to buy it cheaper - but then you needed to add monthly rent of the battery pack (battery pack was leased from the manufacturer, you don't buy it with the Zoe - Renault specialty)

So there simply isn't either physical or pricing space for any fancy equipment like extra airbags, electronic safety/assistive systems, etc. - and that's where Zoe was losing big time in the NCAP tests.

I generally agree, except for this point:

"because otherwise it wouldn't be possible to sell it."

Like, Dacia is making their EV literally for 1/3rd of the cost of the Zoe[0], and yet they managed to get 1 star in ncap tests[1]. So no, I don't think it "wouldn't be possible" to include these better systems - it's just Renault being cheap and riding their brand recognition as Zoe is a pretty popular model.

[0] https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/dacia-spring-ev-...

[1] https://www.euroncap.com/en/results/dacia/spring/44197

But Renault and Dacia are not on the same level of tech. Dacia literally uses stripped "hand-me-downs" from old Renault models, i.e. everything where any R&D is long paid of. So of course they are cheap.

Dacia certainly didn't get that one star because it includes any assistive systems (it does not). It is just slightly bigger so the protection of the occupants in the cabin is naturally better than in the cramped Zoe.

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