The semiconductor crisis is also having a very unpleasant impact on the automotive industry. News about how automakers they can’t finish the cars to the final stage, or that they compromise on their comfortable equipment, we have brought you before. However, the French Peugeot has taken a more drastic step – the utility version of the Expert model intended for Australia has lost a pair of airbags, informs the Czech portal Autoforum.cz.
While last year was in the spirit of problems with the lack of chips in cars, the new one starts as well. Just a few hours ago, we announced that Škoda had to let it stand parking hundreds of electric cars Enyaq.
However, there is another major problem with electric cars, as they need to be charged continuously during extended periods of time so that the voltage on the battery does not drop too much and the future owner has a problem starting it, or even battery life. Even in this case, however, it is more of a problem related to comfort or logistics. In the case of Peugeot, however, complications with the chips also affect the level of safety of their models.
They can afford it in Australia
Each market has different requirements for the safety of new cars, and the Australian seems to be one of the more benevolent. Due to the lack of chips, Peugeot decided to sell the Expert van on the local market without a pair of side airbags.
Peugeot
So if customers want their car on time, they have to accept such a major compromise. However, if the pair of airbags, which are now standard equipment in almost all cars, do not want to give up, they will have to wait a few months longer for their new car.
As the portal states Drive, for purely passenger cars, Peugeot would probably not have been able to do so in Australia either, but paradoxically, van drivers spend much more time on the road and are therefore at least statistically most at risk in transport.
Europe would probably not allow such a thing
Fortunately, it is very unlikely that any carmaker would resort to similar acts in its models for the European market. Airbags, paradoxically, are still not mandatory in the EU (unlike, for example, tire pressure monitoring or the stabilization system), recalls Indian Express, but nevertheless almost every new car comes with at least four airbags, as safety expectations are much stricter in our country and the car without them would be practically unsaleable, or it would be there was a threat of a PR fiasco in the form of a low number of stars.
However, it is possible that other carmakers, not just Peugeot, will start to take away from driving assistants. Here we can mention, for example, the blind spot assistant or the center lane guidance assistant.
Without them, they probably wouldn’t be able to reach the maximum number of 5 stars from crash tests, but it would be a workable compromise to sell or buy a new car from the customer’s position.