Bharat NCAP 2.0 Coming In October 2027: Report

Bharat NCAP, which made its debut in India in October 2023, is set to get new protocols, as per a report by ET Auto. The update to Bharat NCAP will come in to effect from October 2027 and Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS) will become a big part of the new protocols. 

“We are discussing how the India-specific use cases can be addressed better,” said Ujjawala Karle, Deputy Director, Automotive Research Association of India (ARAI) at an ADAS show in Bengaluru. ARAI is also working on creating an ADAS testing ground at an 18-acre facility on the outskirts of Pune. Acko Drive has reached out to Bharat NCAP for a comment and we will update this story when we get a reply. 

Sources told ET Auto that nine task forces are being set up in order to further ‘Indianise’ Bharat NCAP, which currently uses a lot of the protocols set by Global NCAP. As of now, only Electronic Stability Programme (ESP) is mandatory for a car to be tested by Bharat NCAP. The source also said that according to the AIS 185 standard that encompasses ADAS, the vulnerable road users test will see some revisions. Some new standards for ADAS are also in the pipeline. 

Passive safety has become quite mature in India and Indian-made cars, and now “active safety and ADAS will take a front row.” 

A majority of the road accidents are predicted to occur due to driver error. To help compensate for human errors, focus should now shift on adding more safety systems in cars. In 2023, 4.8 lakh accidents were recorded and of those, 1.72 lakh were fatalities. Figures for 2024 are yet to be revealed.