Watch the news below to understand why I believe ESP should be fitted standard on all cars.
Electronic stability programme – quite a mouthful and for marketing purposes, car manufacturers usually have different names for it. BMW calls it Dynamic Stability Control (DSC), Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen and Audi calls it Electronic Stability Programme (ESP), Porsche calls it Porsche Stability Management (PSM), Honda and Acura calls it Vehicle Stability Assist (VSA) while Toyota and Lexus calls it Vehicle Stability Control (VSC). Well you get the picture and to simplify today’s discussion lets just call it ESP, simply because this technology is pioneered by Bosch and is a registered trademark by Robert Bosch GmbH.
In response to the contents of the videos posted above, I am very concerned on the direction of our automotive industry is heading, safety wise, particularly in the developing market regions of Asia.
My concerns lies in the growing misplaced priorities in terms of passive and active vehicle safety. At the moment, I am seeing more and more cars, especially those base model / entry-level variants being specs up illogically. Take for example Proton’s new Saga, Persona. The M-line specs Saga comes with a driver’s airbag with no ABS. Same applies to the Persona M-line. ABS is only available on the High-line variants. And its not just the local makes that are guilty. Even Toyota’s new Rush comes with only a single airbag with no ABS for the entry-level G-grade models. I checked out the newly launched Chevy Optra sedan and it’s the same case. And the popularity of SUVs makes thing even more dangerous. It is even more critical for high centre of gravity vehicles likes MPVs and SUVs to be fitted with ESP. Notice how bad did the SUV in the first video flipped? Still think an SUV is safe just because its big? A regular car would have avoided the crash without much drama.
As competition in the car industry heats up and with ever tougher emission, crash safety regulations combined with an ever more demanding customers who wants everything in the cars but with a lower price and uses even less fuel, expect the other car manufacturers to follow suit. Put it this way, if the titanic Toyota has to do it. Everyone else will surely have to do it.
Here is the illogical part – why would anyone want to pay for a piece of EXPLODING balloon filled with toxic gases over electronic devices that would avoid you from crashing in the first place! I blame this on a combination of public ignorance and apathy towards public safety from car manufacturers. Car companies, like all corporate entities, have nothing angelic about them, despite whatever they might have on their corporate manifesto. But the consumers themselves deserve their fair share of the blame for turning into such a shallow super-facial society that we see today. People are more willing to pay for something tangible, something they can see. And car manufacturers spend millions every year for focus group studies and surveys. Companies are not stupid. Consumers are. And car manufacturers are not in the business of education, they are in the business of increasing value to their share holders. The customers wants A, so car companies will give them A. Doesn’t matter even if B is better for them.
Maybe it’s the pyrotechnic effects of an exploding airbag that makes consumers feel that they have got a fair return for their money. ESP meanwhile, is nothing but a tiny light on the dash that lights up to notify the driver that silicon techno-wizardry has just stopped him from becoming a mangled piece of flesh and metal and allowed him to continue driving as usual. Maybe it’s this subtle form of super-effectiveness, that drivers don’t even realise that they have gotten their money worth. Every now and then I hear really retarded drivers complaining that they walked away from a crash but their airbags did not deploy. Like this retarded Chinese man. The fact that you walked away means that the car’s structure has done what it was supposed to do! Airbags are a last line of defence. Even if you survived you could very likely be maimed for life! Or if you are lucky, you just broke your leg.
But then again, it was the companies that were influenced by engineers that made this world a better place. Mercedes-Benz and Bosch pioneered ABS when nobody else saw the need nor the demand for it. Development for ESP began way back in the 1959, when Professor Fritz Nallinger, Chief Engineer and Member of the Board of Management of Daimler-Benz, patented a control system designed to prevent spinning of the driving wheels by intervention in the engine, transmission or brakes. But the technology did not exist to realise such a function at that time. It was only in the mid-80s when things started to pick up with the development of microelectronics. The same story goes for ABS. And when Mercedes-Benz finally rolled out ABS and later ESP, they included as part of “standard” function for the flagship S-class. There was no fancy-pancy marketing efforts shouting the feature. Mercede-Benz even licensed its intellectual properties to other manufacturers, in the name of improving public safety.
The same story goes to the 3-point seatbelt fitted on all modern cars that all of us took for granted. Nils Bohlin invented the world’s first 3-point seatbelt, which became a standard feature on all Volvo cars since 1959. Long before any government legislation required them to do so. No consumers at that time thought seat belts were necessary. But Volvo went ahead with it anyway, motivated by typical nobility of Scandinavian values on the preservation of human life. They don’t call themselves Volvo For Life for nothing.
Would a management board of today approve such capital expenditure? Companies prefer high publicity events to exalt their corporate social responsibility where they can get tax deductions, rather than spending capital on long term R&D efforts whose results, benefits development time frame are unknown. Mercedes-Benz would not have possibly known when can they realise ESP technology.
In such a business climate, this is where I hope the governments of the world will come in. Australia is leading the area now with the Australian government pushing for a new regulation forcing all car manufacturers to fit ESP as a standard feature in order to qualify for a full 5-star ANCAP safety rating. As expected, car lobby groups are vocally against the move. Ironically, it was Volvo who protested against the move saying that such a move would render its vehicles uncompetitively priced. I guess Volvo today operates under a very different environment compared to the time of Nils Bohlin.
So are we progressing ahead? Or are regressing in terms of safety development, but progressing on our financial standings.
Electronic stability programme – quite a mouthful and for marketing purposes, car manufacturers usually have different names for it. BMW calls it Dynamic Stability Control (DSC), Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen and Audi calls it Electronic Stability Programme (ESP), Porsche calls it Porsche Stability Management (PSM), Honda and Acura calls it Vehicle Stability Assist (VSA) while Toyota and Lexus calls it Vehicle Stability Control (VSC). Well you get the picture and to simplify today’s discussion lets just call it ESP, simply because this technology is pioneered by Bosch and is a registered trademark by Robert Bosch GmbH.
In response to the contents of the videos posted above, I am very concerned on the direction of our automotive industry is heading, safety wise, particularly in the developing market regions of Asia.
My concerns lies in the growing misplaced priorities in terms of passive and active vehicle safety. At the moment, I am seeing more and more cars, especially those base model / entry-level variants being specs up illogically. Take for example Proton’s new Saga, Persona. The M-line specs Saga comes with a driver’s airbag with no ABS. Same applies to the Persona M-line. ABS is only available on the High-line variants. And its not just the local makes that are guilty. Even Toyota’s new Rush comes with only a single airbag with no ABS for the entry-level G-grade models. I checked out the newly launched Chevy Optra sedan and it’s the same case. And the popularity of SUVs makes thing even more dangerous. It is even more critical for high centre of gravity vehicles likes MPVs and SUVs to be fitted with ESP. Notice how bad did the SUV in the first video flipped? Still think an SUV is safe just because its big? A regular car would have avoided the crash without much drama.
As competition in the car industry heats up and with ever tougher emission, crash safety regulations combined with an ever more demanding customers who wants everything in the cars but with a lower price and uses even less fuel, expect the other car manufacturers to follow suit. Put it this way, if the titanic Toyota has to do it. Everyone else will surely have to do it.
Here is the illogical part – why would anyone want to pay for a piece of EXPLODING balloon filled with toxic gases over electronic devices that would avoid you from crashing in the first place! I blame this on a combination of public ignorance and apathy towards public safety from car manufacturers. Car companies, like all corporate entities, have nothing angelic about them, despite whatever they might have on their corporate manifesto. But the consumers themselves deserve their fair share of the blame for turning into such a shallow super-facial society that we see today. People are more willing to pay for something tangible, something they can see. And car manufacturers spend millions every year for focus group studies and surveys. Companies are not stupid. Consumers are. And car manufacturers are not in the business of education, they are in the business of increasing value to their share holders. The customers wants A, so car companies will give them A. Doesn’t matter even if B is better for them.
Maybe it’s the pyrotechnic effects of an exploding airbag that makes consumers feel that they have got a fair return for their money. ESP meanwhile, is nothing but a tiny light on the dash that lights up to notify the driver that silicon techno-wizardry has just stopped him from becoming a mangled piece of flesh and metal and allowed him to continue driving as usual. Maybe it’s this subtle form of super-effectiveness, that drivers don’t even realise that they have gotten their money worth. Every now and then I hear really retarded drivers complaining that they walked away from a crash but their airbags did not deploy. Like this retarded Chinese man. The fact that you walked away means that the car’s structure has done what it was supposed to do! Airbags are a last line of defence. Even if you survived you could very likely be maimed for life! Or if you are lucky, you just broke your leg.
A living proof that wealth and IQ are mutually exclusive. The doors are still intact, the A-pillars hardly moved, even the damn grille, bumpers and fog lamps are still intact! Why would he want to sue Mercedes-Benz for not blowing up a toxic gas filled balloon so loud that it could damage his hearing and burn his skin!
As an engineer by training, this is the part that I really cannot understand why airbags are fitted on entry-level models but ABS and ESP are not. ESP cost only a little more than a USD 100, according to many reports. However I believe the figure is far lower now with greater economics of scale from higher adoption. Most of the hardware required for ESP already existed on ABS equipped models. The development cost of airbags are far higher than ABS and ESP. With an airbag, you need to run very complex computer simulations and even crash testing an actual vehicle! And very often, multiple cars will have to crashed because there are various engineering validation and calibration steps to be done. With ESP, all it takes is just to install the relevant electronic control units and sensors on a pre-production / test vehicle. The mechanical actuators are shared with ABS system anyway. Send it out on a test track and put it through a series of course to calibrate the software according to the dynamic properties of the vehicle. So how can ESP and ABS be fitted only on higher grade models while lower grade models get the more expensive airbag?! It just doesn’t make sense.
The truth is that the inclusion of airbag, ABS and ESP is not so much of a matter of cost, but more of marketing to differentiate the lower priced models from the more expensive ones. Manufacturers are always enticing customers to buy to the more expensive versions, and to do that they would have to specs it up in such a way that the customer perceive as well worth the additional price. Notice the word perceive. Not actual.
Ever since the capital boom and mega corporate mergers of the 90s, we live in an age where companies are increasingly influenced more by businessmen and less by engineers. The average contract of a CEO is 4 years. Shareholders demand an increase in their value by the quarter. All these combine to result in a trend where companies tend to look increasingly on the short term of the next 5 years, and less on the next 50. Why would a CEO invest in 100mpg hyper-fuel efficient cars, or the next big safety technology if it would mean that the results can only be seen in the next 10 years or so if does not improve his performance review by the corporate board? With this sort of stupid pressures from retarded millionaires, I am afraid a more market demand driven company will start pressuring engineers to lower the threshold of airbag deployment just to show stupid customers that “there you go, you paid more for the airbag, see it works, happy?”
The development and many critical safety items today again shows the differences in culture. Japanese companies are know to be more market driven, while European companies, particularly German ones are more innovation drive. (i.e. Did anybody asked for i-Drive to be fitted in BMWs?) Put it this way, the boss of Toyota, Katsuaki Watanabe is an economics graduate. While boss of BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen; Norbert Reithofer, Dieter Zetsche and Ferdinand Piech respectively, are all engineers by training. The economics graduate is heading the world’s largest (ignore the technicalities of GM’s figure alright?) and most powerful car company while Piech built the amazing but utterly useless engineering exercise, the Bugatti Veyron. The other two are busy engaging in horsepower wars with their M-badged and AMG-badged models.
As an engineer by training, this is the part that I really cannot understand why airbags are fitted on entry-level models but ABS and ESP are not. ESP cost only a little more than a USD 100, according to many reports. However I believe the figure is far lower now with greater economics of scale from higher adoption. Most of the hardware required for ESP already existed on ABS equipped models. The development cost of airbags are far higher than ABS and ESP. With an airbag, you need to run very complex computer simulations and even crash testing an actual vehicle! And very often, multiple cars will have to crashed because there are various engineering validation and calibration steps to be done. With ESP, all it takes is just to install the relevant electronic control units and sensors on a pre-production / test vehicle. The mechanical actuators are shared with ABS system anyway. Send it out on a test track and put it through a series of course to calibrate the software according to the dynamic properties of the vehicle. So how can ESP and ABS be fitted only on higher grade models while lower grade models get the more expensive airbag?! It just doesn’t make sense.
The truth is that the inclusion of airbag, ABS and ESP is not so much of a matter of cost, but more of marketing to differentiate the lower priced models from the more expensive ones. Manufacturers are always enticing customers to buy to the more expensive versions, and to do that they would have to specs it up in such a way that the customer perceive as well worth the additional price. Notice the word perceive. Not actual.
Ever since the capital boom and mega corporate mergers of the 90s, we live in an age where companies are increasingly influenced more by businessmen and less by engineers. The average contract of a CEO is 4 years. Shareholders demand an increase in their value by the quarter. All these combine to result in a trend where companies tend to look increasingly on the short term of the next 5 years, and less on the next 50. Why would a CEO invest in 100mpg hyper-fuel efficient cars, or the next big safety technology if it would mean that the results can only be seen in the next 10 years or so if does not improve his performance review by the corporate board? With this sort of stupid pressures from retarded millionaires, I am afraid a more market demand driven company will start pressuring engineers to lower the threshold of airbag deployment just to show stupid customers that “there you go, you paid more for the airbag, see it works, happy?”
The development and many critical safety items today again shows the differences in culture. Japanese companies are know to be more market driven, while European companies, particularly German ones are more innovation drive. (i.e. Did anybody asked for i-Drive to be fitted in BMWs?) Put it this way, the boss of Toyota, Katsuaki Watanabe is an economics graduate. While boss of BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen; Norbert Reithofer, Dieter Zetsche and Ferdinand Piech respectively, are all engineers by training. The economics graduate is heading the world’s largest (ignore the technicalities of GM’s figure alright?) and most powerful car company while Piech built the amazing but utterly useless engineering exercise, the Bugatti Veyron. The other two are busy engaging in horsepower wars with their M-badged and AMG-badged models.
The S-class pioneered many safety features long before it was required by law.
Image courtesy of whnet.
But then again, it was the companies that were influenced by engineers that made this world a better place. Mercedes-Benz and Bosch pioneered ABS when nobody else saw the need nor the demand for it. Development for ESP began way back in the 1959, when Professor Fritz Nallinger, Chief Engineer and Member of the Board of Management of Daimler-Benz, patented a control system designed to prevent spinning of the driving wheels by intervention in the engine, transmission or brakes. But the technology did not exist to realise such a function at that time. It was only in the mid-80s when things started to pick up with the development of microelectronics. The same story goes for ABS. And when Mercedes-Benz finally rolled out ABS and later ESP, they included as part of “standard” function for the flagship S-class. There was no fancy-pancy marketing efforts shouting the feature. Mercede-Benz even licensed its intellectual properties to other manufacturers, in the name of improving public safety.
The same story goes to the 3-point seatbelt fitted on all modern cars that all of us took for granted. Nils Bohlin invented the world’s first 3-point seatbelt, which became a standard feature on all Volvo cars since 1959. Long before any government legislation required them to do so. No consumers at that time thought seat belts were necessary. But Volvo went ahead with it anyway, motivated by typical nobility of Scandinavian values on the preservation of human life. They don’t call themselves Volvo For Life for nothing.
Would a management board of today approve such capital expenditure? Companies prefer high publicity events to exalt their corporate social responsibility where they can get tax deductions, rather than spending capital on long term R&D efforts whose results, benefits development time frame are unknown. Mercedes-Benz would not have possibly known when can they realise ESP technology.
In such a business climate, this is where I hope the governments of the world will come in. Australia is leading the area now with the Australian government pushing for a new regulation forcing all car manufacturers to fit ESP as a standard feature in order to qualify for a full 5-star ANCAP safety rating. As expected, car lobby groups are vocally against the move. Ironically, it was Volvo who protested against the move saying that such a move would render its vehicles uncompetitively priced. I guess Volvo today operates under a very different environment compared to the time of Nils Bohlin.
So are we progressing ahead? Or are regressing in terms of safety development, but progressing on our financial standings.
4 comments:
Is it possible to purchase (and install) an "ESP device" aftermarket?
I aint too comfortable with oversteer and my old car does that in the rain a lot. Granted that its got suspension that's quite old.
I don't think so.
ESP / ESC is not a one-size fits all sort of equipment. Even if someone does come out with it, I don't think you would want to trust your life on it! I've heard of people installing after-market ABS and airbags. Madness!
Critical safety items like these must be calibrated to the car's unique dynamic properties. Last thing you would want is to have this "smartie chip" braking one of the wheels when its not supposed to, and NOT braking when its supposed to.
http://images.worldcarfans.com/articles/2007/10/17/9071017.001/9071017.001.Mini1L.jpg
This is the development mule of the next Ford Focus RS underdoing calibration for ESP, TC, ABS, etc etc. Notice the amount of telemetry / data logging equipment on it. Trust your "Brothers" accessory shop to do this?
Hmmm... good point. Do you see a case for investment in an aftermarket solution for certain car segments?
i.e. a company that specialises in developing and selling such devices for proton cars - newer models anyway.
I don't think that will be possible due to various legal reasons.
In a highly litigious like USA and Europe, who then gets the blame should a failure or worse, death occurs.
Will the insurers support such a move?
Also I think such a case will draw a very fine line between after-market business and tampering intellectual property of the manufacturer.
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