On about 19 October the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways published a draft rule that would make advanced emergency braking (AEB) compulsory in passenger cars: in every new model from 1 October 2030 and in every car built from 1 October 2032. AEB uses a radar, a camera or both to watch the road ahead, warns the driver of an impending collision and brakes on its own if the driver does not. The draft is open for 30 days of comment.

This blog’s piece on automotive textiles found that airbags and seat belts are among the most import-dependent parts of a car. AEB moves car safety from fabric to electronics, which India imports even more of. This piece sets out what the rule requires, how it compares with Europe and the US, what the hardware is and where it comes from, and what the earlier airbag mandate suggests about whether the dates will hold.

What the draft requires, and how late it is

India’s standard, AIS-185, is built on the UN’s Regulation 152, the same basis as Europe’s. Europe has required AEB in every new car since July 2024, and the US will from September 2029, with a tougher test that brakes at higher speeds. India’s full requirement would arrive eight years after Europe’s. The gap is partly deliberate: the draft gives carmakers four years to redesign new models and six to change models already in production.

Bharat NCAP, India’s voluntary crash-rating programme, will not close the gap first. Its 2.0 protocol, expected from October 2027, requires stability control for a rating but leaves AEB tests optional, inside an accident-avoidance score worth 10 of 100 points.

Fewer than one in ten new cars has it now

Counterpoint Research estimates that 8.41% of passenger vehicles sold in 2025 had advanced driver-assistance systems, up from 6.43% in 2024. Applied to the 46.43 lakh cars sold in 2025-26, that is about 3.9 lakh cars with the systems and about 43 lakh without. Most equipped cars are utility vehicles, according to CRISIL. The cheapest car with full driver assistance listed in recent comparisons is the top automatic variant of the Maruti Baleno at Rs 9.99 lakh ex-showroom; lower variants of the same car go without it.

The case for the rule is the crash data. In 2023, India recorded 172,890 road deaths. Crashes where a vehicle was hit from behind were the most common type, about 21% of accidents and 20% of deaths, or about 34,578 deaths. AEB in cars addresses only part of that: those where a car is the vehicle doing the hitting, and those where it hits a pedestrian. The ministry’s report does not break the figure down that way.

What AEB needs, and where it comes from

The hardware is the import question. Imports under the customs line for radar apparatus (HS 85261000) were about Rs 486 crore in 2024-25, 230% more than a year earlier, on commerce ministry data reported by a trade-statistics site. That line covers all radar, not only car radar, but car radar is the part that is growing. China supplied about 36% of India’s auto-component imports in 2025-26, according to the component makers’ association as reported. Local assembly of radars and cameras has begun, but the chips inside them, the radar transceivers, image sensors and processors, are imported; this blog found no Indian production of them.

A cheaper design is emerging. Suzuki, Maruti’s parent, says it is developing AEB that drops the radar and uses cameras with an AI chip, and the supplier Aumovio has shown a single-camera system aimed at small cars. A camera-only system would cut the number of imported parts, though not the chips. Either way, AEB can only brake the car through an electronic stability-control unit, so a mandate for AEB is in practice also a mandate for stability control, for which this blog found no mandate in Indian cars.

What the airbag mandate suggests

India has been here before. The six-airbag rule was drafted in January 2022, deferred a year because the industry said it lacked capacity, and dropped in September 2023 in favour of letting crash ratings push carmakers. That approach has worked to a degree: the minister said at the time that carmakers offering six airbags were gaining market share. But AEB is a harder sell to buyers than airbags, because its benefit is invisible until it works. The long lead time in the draft, and the fact that it builds on a UN standard that suppliers already meet in Europe, make it more likely to hold than the airbag rule was. Whether it does will be decided in the comment period now running.

What would fix this

• MoRTH should publish, with the final rule, its estimate of cost per car and lives saved, as the US regulator did for its rule, so the dates can be weighed against the benefit.
• MoRTH’s annual road-accident report should split rear-end and pedestrian crashes by the type of the striking vehicle, so the share AEB in cars can address is known.
• The rule should make electronic stability control compulsory in cars on the same timetable, since AEB depends on it.
• Bharat NCAP 2.0 should make AEB tests compulsory for a five-star rating from 2029, so ratings reward it before the mandate arrives.
• The government should track imports of automotive radar and camera modules under their own tariff lines, so localisation can be measured.

These are proposals from this blog, not recommendations any agency has adopted.

What this piece could not establish

The draft notification and AIS-185 could not be opened directly; the dates come from news reports, which agree on 2030 for new models and 2032 for all cars but differ on wording. No reliable estimate of the cost of AEB per car in India was found; the per-airbag figure is a comparison, not a proxy. The ADAS share is a market-research estimate on calendar-year sales applied here to fiscal-year sales. The rear-end shares are as reported from the ministry’s 2023 report, and one outlet gives 23% of accidents instead of 21%. The radar import figure covers a whole customs line, not car radar alone. The status of the bus and truck mandate could not be confirmed.

Sources and caveats

About this article: Researched, written and edited by Umashankar Triplicane Dwarakanathan, with AI research assistance; every figure is meant to trace to the primary source cited. See the Editorial Policy for how sourcing, AI use and corrections work.