Chery Omoda 5 gets five-star rating

ANCAP has issued a five-star safety rating to the Chery Omoda 5 SUV this week, marking a considerable turnaround from the brand’s last assessed models some 12 years ago. The rating applies to all 1.5-litre petrol-powered variants sold locally.

Assessed against the 2020-2022 rating criteria, the structural performance of the Omoda 5 was noted as sound in the frontal offset (MPDB) crash test, with a mix of Good and Adequate performance achieved.

However, ANCAP did note concerns relating to the design of the dashboard saying hard elements beneath could become a potential source of knee injury risk to occupants of different sizes to the driver and front passenger test dummies. Penalties were applied to reflect this risk.

In the side impact test, dummy injury measurements for key body regions were marked as Good, however during the test the head-protecting side curtain airbag did not operate as intended, and a penalty was applied – reducing the score for the driver’s head in both the frontal and offset test and oblique pole tests to Adequate.

ANCAP said the front-end design of the Omoda 5 was shown to be effective in minimising injury risk to the occupants of an oncoming vehicle if struck, with only a “very slight deduction” applied in this area of testing – making it one of the best scores recorded for vehicle-to-vehicle compatibility to date.

On the active safety front, the AEB performance of the Omoda 5 was rated as Good, with functionality extending to detect and respond to other vehicles, pedestrians and cyclists, and in reversing and intersection turning (junction assist) scenarios.

Further, following an update to the lane support software offering in Australian-supplied vehicles from April, additional emergency lane keeping and lane keep assist tests were conducted to assess any potential difference in safety-related performance.

The additional tests showed vehicles fitted with the updated software maintained a similar level of performance to the test results obtained in initial European (EuroNCAP) testing, though the local vehicle did not respond in a small number of emergency lane keeping test scenarios and this is reflected in a reduced score.

In the Adult Occupant Protection category, the Chery Omoda 5 scored an 87 per cent score (33.42 points out of a possible 38) and in the Child Occupant Protection category managed 88 per cent (43.32 points out of a possible 49).

For the Vulnerable Road User category, the model scored 68 per cent (36.96 points out of a possible 54) and in the Safety Assist category 83 per cent (13.36 points out of a possible 16).

“This five-star ANCAP rating for the Omoda 5 is a marked improvement on the results seen by Chery’s original market entrants a decade ago,” said ANCAP chief executive officer, Carla Hoorweg.

“Chery has made significant strides to reach the five-star standard and we encourage them to continue to refine and improve the performance of their vehicles with future new models and model updates.”