How much would you pay for safety? Chinese brand JAC spills on the staggering cost of a five-star ANCAP safety rating for its 2025 JAC T9 ute

Newly launched Chinese brand JAC has spilled on the real cost of obtaining a five-star ANCAP safety rating in Australia, confiding that the brand had to invest tens of millions of dollars to score top marks under 2024's testing protocols.

That's the word from the General Manager of JAC International, David Zhang, who told CarsGuide that securing the title of 'Australia's safest ute in 2024' according to ANCAP was anything but a cheap exercise.

So, how much money does it take to claim a five-star ANCAP rating? A staggering 100 million Chinese Yuan, or $21.3 million in Australian dollars.

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Much of that money is sunk into the R&D required to develop and fit the active safety systems now a prerequisite for a full ANCAP rating.

"This is why we made the big investment to get the five-star safety," Mr Zhang says. "I think if we can get the most strict and highest ratings of the five star in 2024, this is very important to build our image."

Quizzed on where the money was spent, Mr Zhang suggested the inclusion of extra sensors, and the computing power to quickly identify issues and act of them, was the biggest expense.

"(It's) not the passive safety, it's the active safety, You need more sensors... and to make the quick action.

2025 JAC T9 Haven (image: Dean McCartney)

"Big investment – 100 million RMB."

While that seems like a huge investment to achieve a five-star rating on a single model in just one country, JAC says the lessons learned will feed back into the brand R&D centres and influence future product.

"That kind of technology can also be applied and used in other models," Mr Zhang says. "There is a lot of collaboration. And also the investment is not only part of the software, but also hardware."