Some of the cars produced in Iran have witnessed the least change in terms of design and standards for more than 20 years.
“Apart from Tara and Shahin, most of the other domestic cars do not have any safe bodies, because their design structure and architecture are old,” Abolfazl Khalkhali, the head of the electric vehicle design team of the University of Science and Technology, told Donyaye Khodro.
Car bodies are produced domestically from molds that can only be used to produce a certain number of vehicles, as per the defined standards. Overuse reduces the accuracy in body parts and gives rise to several problems in the final product. But since designing and building new molds are expensive, automakers usually ignore those standards.
Khalkhali noted that most of the domestic cars have the same condition in terms of design.
“But cars such as Tara and Shahin have moved towards a better standard and have up-to-date designs. In terms of design and engineering, the bodies of these domestic cars are standardized. Saina’s body is also designed based on the standard of pedestrian protection, but the so-called soft materials used in body parts cannot be imported [due to sanctions] and Mobarakeh Steel Company does not supply the needed materials. Although producers have good car designs, there are still numerous problems in terms of material and production method,” he said.
“There are good mold manufacturing companies in Iran but in production, the time cycle gains importance. For instance, IKCO has an automotive production line that can prepare 40 cars per hour with a low level of automation. Similar lines in Japanese or German companies can produce a higher number of cars in the same period due to higher levels of automation.”
According to the expert, the costs of producing a new mold vary.
“For example, if automakers want to make another mold for the roof, they have to spend 100-200 billion rials [about $360,000-720,000]. As a result, the gap and flush have lost their accuracies due to the fact that the molds have been used a lot,” he added.
The gap is the horizontal separation between two surfaces and the flush is the vertical displacement between two surfaces in the orthogonal direction.
Khalkhali stressed that these gaps should not exist in new cars, but they are still visible and pertain to car assembly and not the molds.
“The molds, jigs and fixtures of some of these cars are imported from China. A car manufacturer that strictly follows the gap and flush standards has a higher overall standard. These are minimized in cars produced by BMW, Benz and Volkswagen. For example, in Iran, a 5-millimeter gap for cars is standard. But this figure declines to 1 millimeter in well-known global brands. Therefore, the amount of gap in domestic cars are five times higher than the foreign brands,” he said.
“Our national standards are based on European standards and the most important is the face-to-face collision standard known as R94 and the side-by-side collision standard known as R95. When these two standards are tested, there is a test dummy inside the car that helps gauge the pressure experienced by the head, knees, chest, etc. during the collision. As the test is expensive, automakers conduct the test only once for each product. Unfortunately, some of the cars sold in the country do not undergo this test even once, while others have not passed this test. What’s more, some of the cars that have passed the test are different from the models undergoing mass production.”
Naturally, cars produced under these conditions will be of poor quality and have a dismal safety standard.
ISIRI: No Good Quality Vehicles Produced in Last Eight Years
In the last eight years, no good quality vehicles have been produced, the head of the Institute of Standards and Industrial Research of Iran declared recently.
Mehdi Eslampanah added that nine standards were suspended in the previous government, which led to a decline in vehicle quality.
“The issues of safety, quality, performance and evaluation are among factors inspected for evaluating quality. ISIRI is responsible for developing this system, but we are not responsible for what happens during the designing and production stages,” Eslampanah was quoted as saying by Car.ir.
Supervisors determining vehicle safety include the General Command of Iran’s Law-Enforcement Forces, Industries Ministry, ISIRI, Department of Environment and Iran Fuel Conservation Company.
Automakers are mandated to produce vehicles as per defined standards.
According to the ISIRI chief, there are many violations in terms of standards in the auto manufacturing industry.
“If auto producers do not fulfill their obligations, we will stop assigning license-plates to vehicles with the help of the Iranian Traffic Police,” he said.
"These standards constitute the minimum [acceptable] quality required, which is not observed [by automakers].”
Eslampanah added that steel sheets used in domestic vehicles are not subjected to mandatory standards.
“Interestingly, the car gear number is subjected to mandatory standards, but the vehicle’s body and steel plates are not subject to mandatory standards,” he said.
At present, Iran National Standards Organization does not approve of steel sheets used in car bodies by domestic producers.
The official noted that even assuming domestic car production is observing standards, there is no control over the injection of low-quality and spurious parts into the after-sales service network.
“In the last two weeks, we tracked and disbanded one of the largest gangs injecting smuggled recycled disks into the distribution network and after-sales service by faking the standard emblem and packaging. In such cases, there is no supervision at all,” he said.
“We have created a market monopoly in which there is no competition and the consumer has no other choice but to buy or pre-order [low-quality and high-priced vehicles and parts].”
Eslampanah stressed that the standard organization is only a supervisory entity and called for abolishing the monopoly of domestic automakers.
