Availability of ESC in cars – 2010

Far too many cars came onto the market in 2009 without the required ESC driver assistance system. The UDV (German Insurers Accident Research) estimates that over 830,000 new cars without an electronic stability control system were registered in Germany in the boom year of 2009. Around 190,000 of those new vehicles were registered under the scrappage scheme. The reason for this is that, under the scrappage scheme, many people bought either entry-level models offered without an electronic stability control system or cars from manufacturers that do not equip their cars with ESC at all.

A quarter of all model ranges still do not have ESC fitted as standard in 2010. The biggest causes for concern are the very small car segment (in which only two out of 19 model ranges are equipped with ESC as standard), the utility vehicle segment (six out of 23 model ranges have ESC as standard) and the small car segment (15 out of 30 model ranges have ESC as standard). These were the findings of a recent study carried out by the UDV into the availability of ESC in new vehicles in 2010. 295 model ranges from a total of 39 car manufacturers were analyzed.

Findings of the 2010 ESC study

• There are still 22 model ranges for which ESC is not available.
• There are another eight model ranges for which ESC is always optional and is only rarely bought as an extra.
• 74% of all model ranges have ESC as standard (2006: 58%).
• The percentage of all newly registered cars with ESC fell from 81 percent in 2008 to 78 percent in 2009.
• The best vehicle categories in 2010 are upper midrange cars, luxury cars and sports cars. 100% of the cars in each of these categories have ESC fitted as standard.
• The worst vehicle categories in 2010 are very small cars (only 11% of which have ESC as standard), utility vehicles (23%) and small cars (50%).
• Only two out of 19 model ranges in the very small car segment are fitted with ESC as standard (Smart, Toyota IQ).
• Even when ESC is available as an option, consumers generally do not want to pay prices starting at around 300 euros for ESC in the small car segment. Expensive trim packages that include ESC deter them even more.

Databases are available for the model years 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010 at http://www.udv.de/esp/.