ANCAP to cut five-star ratings if safety tech deleted from cars amid chip shortage

ANCAP has put car makers on notice, warning that five-star safety ratings could be downgraded if key safety features are deleted to ease semiconductor shortage pressures.

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Independent safety body ANCAP has warned that car manufacturers that remove crucial active safety technologies in a bid to navigate shortages posed by the semiconductor shortage could have the safety ratings of their vehicles downgraded.

As the global semiconductor shortage continues to hold the brakes on new-car production, some car makers in various markets have opted to delete key active safety features – which depend on computer chips to function – in order to keep production lines moving and factories open.

However, the fitment and performance of active safety technologies now makes up a quarter of the test criteria for the latest ANCAP safety ratings – so the safety body has advised brands that deleting autonomous emergency braking, lane-keep assist or other key systems will affect a vehicle’s star rating.

“We’ve done a lot of work on it. We’ve approached all the brands and said, “If you’re needing to remove anything, please let us know because it can affect your safety rating if you’re taking something out that [is part of the criteria],” ANCAP CEO Carla Hoorweg told Drive.

“Especially if there are issues with radar and lidar manufacturing as a result of the semiconductor shortage. To date, we haven’t had any [feature deletions] that have affected the rating. We have had some [car brands] notify us of certain things that aren’t available. But I think that’s all public … There’s nothing that we know that’s not been publicly reported yet.

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Most brands in Australia have responded to the chip shortage by reducing volume and pausing production lines, rather than deleting features or reverting typically-standard inclusions to the options list.

While BMW Australia deleted the Driving Assistant Professional safety pack from multiple vehicles at certain points in 2021, it had no impact on its cars’ five-star ANCAP ratings, given the features the pack includes – adaptive cruise control, blind-spot monitoring, lane following assist and more – contribute little (if at all) to the less stringent criteria in force (2019 and earlier) when the vehicles were tested.

Autonomous emergency braking, lane-keep assist (badged Lane Departure Warning with Steering Intervention), speed sign recognition and seatbelt reminders remained standard-fit – the key safety systems counted by ANCAP for a five-star rating when the affected BMW vehicles were tested.

British brand Jaguar Land Rover announced in mid-2021 that it would need to delete features from certain models in Australia to ‘ration’ semiconductors and increase production volume – but company executives assured media each vehicle’s safety technology suite would be left untouched.

Mercedes-Benz Australia removed the Pre-Safe system – which moves seats and closes windows (or the sunroof) to prepare for an accident, when one is detected to be imminent – from certain models in 2021, but this didn’t affect the affected vehicles’ ANCAP ratings.

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However, in their home markets, some European brands have not hesitated to remove features to navigate semiconductor shortages.

French brand Renault deleted autonomous emergency braking (AEB) from all variants of its Zoe electric car in France – which later received a zero-star Euro NCAP safety rating, also influenced by poor crash protection – and removed it from certain variants of its Clio city car and Captur city SUV (as reported by France’s L’Argus).

Meanwhile, Ford of Europe introduced a new ‘Design’ variant of its Puma city SUV, which is

£900 ($AU1700) cheaper than the model above it, but lacks AEB, lane-keep assist, auto high beam and other safety systems – and as a result was excluded from the standard Puma’s five-star Euro NCAP safety rating.

New vehicles require anywhere between 30 and 3000 semiconductors (computer chips) to function – used for safety systems, infotainment, electric seats and much more – with each chip taking about 26 weeks to manufacture in specialist facilities – making it challenging to build new cars with all intended features when semiconductor supply is limited.

“It seemed that in the early days [of the pandemic] there was a lot of concern about what might happen, and then what ended up happening was just production got halted. Rather than strip things out, I think it got too hard too quickly for manufacturers to even be able to finish producing an entire car, so it was just hands down, tools down,” Ms Hoorweg added.

“And obviously some of them were going in and out of lockdown as well. So yes, we just saw ceasing of production for time periods rather than [deleted features].”

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