The latest new cars to be assessed against ANCAP’s current 2023-2025 testing criteria have come through with flying colours to score maximum five-star ratings.
The results for the 2024 BMW 5 Series, Kia EV9 and Mercedes-Benz EQE SUV are significant given a higher threshold for a five-star result was applied earlier this year to one of the the four areas the independent safety body uses to evaluate a new vehicle’s safety - Adult Occupant Protection, Child Occupant Protection, Vulnerable Road User Protection and Safety Assist.
Vehicles must score 80 per cent in the first two categories and 70 per cent in the last two, where the requirement for Vulnerable Road User Protection was previously 60 per cent.
At the same time AEB performance in head-on and junction crossing crash scenarios has been added to the criteria, as well as a car’s ability to notify the driver or emergency services if a child has inadvertently been left in a locked car, and whether a car’s doors can be opened (with electric windows remaining functional and without battery power) for up to two minutes after it’s been submerged.
According to ANCAP the just-released BMW 5 Series performed strongly across each of the four categories and the latest generation luxury sedan’s ranking in physical crash tests was called out as a key factor in the five-star ranking, which includes i5 electric variants.
Kia’s large electric EV9 SUV scored maximum points for car-to-car AEB and lane keeping assist functionality while ranking well for detection of driver distraction and its child presence detection system, operating across the second and third row seats.
The Mercedes-Benz EQE SUV achieved a 100 per cent score for protection of the driver in the side impact test, for the front seat passenger in the frontal offset test, and for the protection of child occupants in side impact and frontal offset tests.
ANCAP ranks individual systems against ‘Good’, ‘Adequate’, ‘Marginal’, ‘Weak’ and ‘Poor’ descriptions and the Mercedes EQE demonstrated Good performance in active lane-keep assist testing and across the range of car-to-car, car-to-cyclist and car-to-motorcycle AEB tests.
Pedestrian-detecting AEB that functions in reverse (AEB Backover) was also rated as ‘Good’.
Six new vehicle models have now been assessed against ANCAP’s 2023-2025 criteria and in response to these latest results ANCAP Chief Executive Officer, Carla Hoorweg said, “While 2023 has been a fairly lean year in terms of new ratings, the great news for new car buyers is that each of the 2023 ratings published to date are five star ratings.”
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