In China’s booming sport utility vehicle (SUV) market, many automakers are selling cars without electronic stability control (ESC) as a standard feature, potentially putting lives at risk from rollover accidents.
SUV sales topped 6 million in China last year, a jump of more than 50 percent in an overall market that grew less than 5 percent, as drivers sought more room for their money. As China’s economy weakens, price-conscious drivers have shifted from foreign brands to cheaper domestic SUVs.
To make the sale, many automakers and dealers only offer ESC as an extra, more expensive, option.
SUVs have a higher center of gravity putting them more at risk of rolling over. ESC counteracts that, quickly reorienting a skidding vehicle to stop it from rolling.
A study published by Annals of Advances in Automotive Medicine found vehicles with ESC are two-thirds less likely to flip.
There is no legal requirement in China for ESC and German parts maker Bosch Co said 43 percent of SUVs do not come equipped with this technology.
Among the 10 best-selling SUVs in China last year, seven did not have ESC as a standard feature. Those included cars made by Great Wall Motor Co (長城汽車), Chongqing Changan Automobile Co (重慶長安汽車), Anhui Jianghuai Automobile (JAC, 江淮汽車) and Chery Automobile Co (奇瑞汽車), according to company representatives and officially published specifications.
The three foreign models in the top-10 are equipped with the safety feature, but some cheaper foreign SUVs also do not have ESC as standard in China.
BYD Co Ltd (比亞迪), Guangzhou Automobile Group Co (GAC, 廣州汽車集團) and Geely Holding Group (吉利控股集團) said some of their models do not have stability control as standard, but it is often available on higher cost packages.
A spokesman for Chery said that with this year’s model all its Tiggo SUVs come with ESC.
JAC and Guangzhou Auto said sales of SUVs without ESC are very low and were part of a pricing strategy to attract customers.
Geely said the majority of its third-generation vehicles have ESC.
Great Wall, Changan and BYD declined to comment.
It is hard to gauge whether the lack of ESC in so many SUVs sold in China has contributed to more fatalities.
In the US, detailed information on every fatal road crash is made publicly available, but in China, crash records and data are often considered state secrets.
The WHO estimates China’s overall traffic fatalities could be four times the official figure.
The Chinese Ministry of Public Security records only fatal rollover crashes on highways and does not break those down for sedans and SUVs. Its latest available data logged 630 rollovers and 403 deaths on Chinese highways in 2014.
Buyers appear either unaware of the risks or of the option to pay more for the safety feature.
“You must give up something if you want a car at that price, so I sacrifice ESC,” said Xu Zhou, a Huansu S3 driver in China’s southern Hunan Province. “If a car has ESC, that’s great, but if not, you have to be more careful when you drive.”
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