ANCAP to focus on ride-sharing

Ride-share customers should be able to book vehicles on the basis of their safety.

That’s the view of the independent vehicle safety testing authority ANCAP, which is turning its attention to ride-sharing and the post private ownership automotive era.

Essentially, ANCAP (Australasian New Car Assessment program) wants to be able to communicate the safety of vehicles being hired by users of services such as Uber and Ola.

It is widely forecast that private car ownership will plunge in the future as autonomous vehicles become more common.

Many people are expected to never learn to drive a car or own one. Even now, before any autonomous vehicles are in service, the likes of Uber are changing the face of the urban transportation mix.

“We have done very well to inform car buyers and users about car safety, but if we believe everything we read at the moment people are no longer going to buy cars in the future,” ANCAP chief executive James Goodwin told motoring.com.au.

“If that is true we need to prepare ourselves for that as well. It’s doing the same thing but doing it differently.

“In the future if no-one owns a car we are still going to be using vehicles as a service.

“When you are ordering a ride-share you should be able to know the safety rating of that vehicle, or even choose what you prefer.”

Clearly, ANCAP is positioning itself to remain relevant in a dramatically changed automotive future. As reported recently by motoring.com.au, it is also investigating expanding its crash testing program from light vehicles to include medium trucks.

As for that program, ANCAP is acting as the global lead investigating a potential ride-sharing safety information program.

If its investigation is successful, the results will be spread to other NCAP services around the globe.

“This is Australian… we are flagging it with [other NCAPs],” confirmed Goodwin. “But it’s still early days. It’s going to have to be global and it should be because the ride-sharing companies are global. But let’s create a bit of a test bed.

“Like we do with car brands we actually want to work with them [ride-sharing companies], but how do we do this? So, let’s get a better result by working and doing workshops and finding out how it is going to work.

“Once we have a few results we can then generate a bit of a case study and present that to all the other NCAPs.”

The expansion into ride-sharing is also a significant change for ANCAP because for the first time it would not be communicating with vehicle buyers.

“We now have to educate non-car drivers and they may never have driven a car,” said Goodwin. “We are speaking to commuters.”

A move into ride-sharing would be consistent with ANCAP’s history, Goodwin insisted.

“I think it’s relevant now but only because we need to get in early. When you think in the modern language ANCAP was a disruptor. We should always be a disruptor if that’s why we started.

“If we disrupted the auto industry 25 years ago, what’s stopping us disrupting the ride-sharing industry now?” he argued.

“So, we should be looking at that. We should be looking at vehicle safety and it doesn’t really matter who owns that vehicle.”