The cheapest Honda Elevate you can now buy has six airbags and stability control. The cheapest one with Honda Sensing costs about ₹3.6 lakh more. That gap is worth sitting with before the next trip to the showroom.
Honda unveiled the facelifted Elevate on 6 October with six grades, from the SV manual at ₹11.80 lakh to the ZX+ Black CVT at ₹18.40 lakh, all ex-showroom Delhi. Every grade gets six airbags, stability control, hill start assist and ISOFIX mounts. So safety, in the basic sense, is not what the extra money buys. Honda Sensing, the ADAS package, starts at the ZX, which is ₹15.39 lakh with a manual gearbox and ₹16.89 lakh with the CVT. It brings collision mitigation braking, adaptive cruise control, lane keep assist, road departure mitigation, a lead car departure alert and auto high-beam. The low-speed follow function is CVT only.
Honda is not selling only ADAS at the ZX, of course. TOI Auto's variant breakdown shows it adds the 10.25-inch touchscreen, leather, front ventilated seats and a better speaker system. The step up from the VX at ₹13.93 lakh is ₹1.46 lakh. The 360-degree camera, front sensors and power seats wait for the ZX+, and the CVT costs about ₹1.5 lakh more wherever it is offered. Also, rear disc brakes and the electric parking brake are CVT only. Manual cars make do with drums at the back. That is the sort of detail brochures do not shout about.
Five stars have become ordinary
Bharat NCAP started in 2023, and in Autocar India's running list of the cars it has tested, only two are rated four stars overall: the Maruti Baleno, which scored 26.52 out of 32 for adult protection and 34.81 out of 49 for child protection, and the Citroen Basalt at 26.19 and 35.90. Everything else comes in at five. I will say, since it is only fair, that the Baleno was tested in June 2025 and a facelift has just launched. I have not seen a retest of the new one.
Recent results have been strong. Maruti's 2026 Brezza facelift scored 30.41 and 43. Tata's refreshed Punch EV got 31.09 and 45, and Mahindra's XUV 7XO 30.76 and 44.97. Both the Harrier EV and the XEV 9e scored a full 32 out of 32 for adult protection, with the BE 6 within 0.03 of it. Thar Roxx became the first body-on-frame SUV to earn five stars. A few years ago I would not have bet on that last one.
Kia is a good example of how the industry got here. Kia's Syros uses the same K1 platform as the Hyundai Grand i10, which scored two stars in a 2020 Global NCAP test. Kia reinforced the base and added a lot of hot-stamped parts to the body shell, and the Syros came out with five stars from Bharat NCAP. It is Kia's first SUV to get a five-star rating from either test. Bharat NCAP is doing what it was meant to do, which is make carmakers sweat over the shell and not only the touchscreen.
When almost everything gets five stars, the star count stops being useful for choosing, and the actual points start to matter. The Honda Amaze and the Citroen Aircross both got five stars for adult protection but only four for child protection, with 40.81 and 40 out of 49. Maruti's Victoris scored 31.66 for adults but 43 for children, where the Kia Seltos got 45. If you have kids in the back, that second column deserves a look.
One more thing. I could not find the new Elevate in Autocar India's list of Bharat NCAP results, so I cannot tell you how it did. Honda has not claimed a rating for it in the launch material I read either.
What ADAS costs, and what it does
Level 2 ADAS now sits on the higher trims of mainstream cars. On the Mahindra XUV 3XO it is reserved for the AX5 L and AX7 variants, and on the Thar Roxx for the AX5L and AX7L. Victoris and Innova Hycross offer it only on their top specifications. In every case, the crash rating applies across the range, but the ADAS does not. You get the shell and the airbags for the price of the base car. You pay extra for the camera and radar.
I am not against ADAS. Automatic emergency braking can matter, especially on a highway at night with a truck that decided not to use its tail-lamps. What I doubt is how well camera-based lane keeping copes with a road where the paint has faded and the surface has been patched six times. The only way to know is to try it on your own road during the test drive, with the salesman quietly hoping you do not.
If it were my money on the Elevate, I would look at the VX and keep the ₹1.46 lakh that the ZX would cost. Some of that could go on a good set of tyres and the rest on insurance with decent coverage. Six airbags and stability control are in the base car. Everything beyond that is a comfort and convenience decision, and it is fine to pay for comfort, as long as you know that is what you are doing.
