Tata Crashed Another Nexon To Remind Us That It’s Still 5-Star Safe — In case you forgot and thought of buying something else | V3Cars

Now, as the momentum for Nexon is probably dying down, Tata decided to send a few examples of Nexon for BNCAP to crush and announce it one more time: Nexon Is A 5-Star Safe Car.

Tata Motors’ overpricing paid off big time in 2021 and 2022. That arrogance carried over in 2023 and early 2024 as the new Nexon, Punch EV, Harrier facelift and Safari facelift went on sale with higher than expected price tags. Then, 2024 (and MG India) gave Tata a reality check as the economic slowdown was catching up to Tata Motors.

This year, we have seen Tata reduce the prices of the following cars:

• Tiago EV
• Punch EV
• Nexon EV
• Nexon
• Punch
• Tiago
• Tigor
• Altroz

That’s pretty much their entire lineup. The only reason the Tigor EV is not on the list is because it mostly sells in commercial form and for those clients, Tata anyways have a separate pricing behind closed doors. Let me remind you that price correction usually happens when discounts aren’t doing the trick to move cars off the dealer lots.

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Moving forward, we saw the Curvv and Curvv EV go on sale with a below-industry-standards price tag. The Punch also received a significant feature and variant revision, which led us to finally give some of its variants top recommendation. They are finally making sense. At least some of them are. Even the feature distribution comes across as if someone from Hyundai or Mahindra worked on that part. It’s still not that good but it’s certainly much better than what we’ve come to expect from Tata in recent years. Some of the high-margin, low usability features have trickled up to higher trims of the Punch while some low-margin features with high usability have found their way to the lower trims.

The Nexon EV also got a 45kWh battery pack so it can deliver a meaningful real-world range. The Nexon ICE also got a panoramic sunroof. Soon after MG had dropped the prices of their EVs early in 2024, Tata also acted swiftly and dropped the Tiago EV’s prices. Likewise, to manage the threat from the Windsor EV, they dropped the prices of the Punch EV and Nexon EV. They even copied the Windsor’s free public charting offer for the Punch EV, if only for 6 months.

Clearly, Tata are on the defensive. What’s worse is that it’s very much apparent. The Nexon is a GNCAP 5-star car and we had no doubt that it is also a BNCAP 5-star car, whether they actually run it into a barrier or not. But, they wanted to remind us that it is also capable of delivering on the promise in BNCAP tests even though BNCAP is not all that much different from GNCAP.

Is 5-Star Really Safer? Ans: Yes! Within City Limits.

If you think you’re invincible in a 5-star car, then you should know that they’re tested at 64kmph. That’s just enough to get fined for overspeeding within city limits where 60kmph is the typical speed limit. Even the Nano AMT only just slots its transmission into 5th gear at 64kmph. It’s less than a Nano’s cruising speed, for God’s sake.

Do note, that the equation of impact damage has the square of velocity on the other side of the equation. So, the difference in damage between a 30kmph crash and 60kmph crash is not the same as that between a 60kmph and a 90kmph crash. That’s despite keeping the velocity/speed difference identical in both examples at 30kmph. Congratulations on buying a 5-star rated car. At expressway speeds, it’s probably only as safe as a 1- or 0-star rated car. Both will most likely result in the same outcome — death of most occupants.

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