Chery’s return to Australia has seen it record strong sales figures from the outset, and in more good news for the brand it can boast better safety results than before.
The Omoda 5, which Chery says it developed as a global model, has earned a five-star rating from ANCAP based on Euro NCAP testing under the outgoing 2020-22 rating criteria.
That’s in stark contrast to the J11 and J1 from Chery’s last crack at our market, which earned ratings of two and three stars, respectively.
The Omoda 5 received an adult occupant protection rating of 87 per cent, a child occupant protection rating of 88 per cent, a vulnerable road user protection rating of 68 per cent, and a safety assist rating of 83 per cent.
The rating applies to both Omoda 5 variants currently on sale in Australia, and has yet to be extended to the upcoming 1.6-litre and electric variants.
ANCAP praised the Omoda 5 for the design of its front end, which it says was shown to be effective in minimising the injury risk to occupants of an oncoming vehicle.
Its performance saw the Omoda 5 receive one of the best scores to date for vehicle-to-vehicle ‘compatibility’.
The safety authority says structural performance in the frontal offset test was “sound”, with a mix of Good and Adequate ratings.
It did, however, flag the hard elements of the dashboard which it says could become a potential source of knee injury risk to people not shaped like its dummies. It therefore applied penalties to reflect this.
Another penalty was applied for a head-protecting side curtain airbag that didn’t open as intended in the side impact test, resulting in an Adequate rating for driver’s head protection in the frontal offset and oblique pole tests.
Other injury measurements recorded by the test dummy for key body regions were deemed Good.
Following an update to the Omoda 5’s lane support software in Australian-specified vehicles, ANCAP conducted additional emergency lane keeping and lane-keep assist tests to assess any differences subsequent to Euro NCAP’s testing.
“The additional tests, conducted locally, showed vehicles with the updated software maintained a similar level of performance to the test results obtained in initial European 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 for ELK,” the safety authority said.
“The overall Safety Assist score remains within the five-star threshold.”
The Omoda 5 also earned a Good rating for the performance of its autonomous emergency braking system in detecting and responding to other vehicles, pedestrians and cyclists, as well as in reversing and intersection turning scenarios.
“This five-star ANCAP safety 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.”
Standard safety features on both Omoda 5 variants include:
- Autonomous emergency braking
- Adaptive cruise control
- Blind-spot monitoring
- Emergency lane keeping
- Integrated Cruise Assist
- Lane-keep assist
- Rear cross-traffic assist
- Traffic jam assist
- Traffic sign recognition
- Driver attention monitoring
- Front, front-side and curtain airbags
- Front-centre airbag
- Reversing camera
- Front, rear parking sensors
The EX also receives a surround-view camera.
MORE: Everything Chery Omoda 5
