I have a hard time imagining that 6k of the remaining cost (a basic car in the US can be had at $10k) would be because of a decent safety standard. I am curious to know how much more than $4k this Renault would be if they had spent a little time designing a safer passenger cell.
I don't think I ever asked that the car have airbags - with this car's atrociously weak passenger cell, an airbag would probably create more harm. All I am surprised by is the poor passenger cell that collapsed like it was made of pasta and everything in my comments has been directed to hoping they will redesign this thing to not collapse in a crash.
Safety requirements will easily hit that. Replacing airbags alone after an accident costs $3-5k. The crash test videos posted up-thread show there's a lot more than just airbags lacking, too.