ANCAP: Top safety marks for single-motor Ford Mustang Mach-E

The Australasian New Car Assessment Program (ANCAP) has issued two of the three upcoming inbound 2023 Ford Mustang Mach-E variants with a full five-star safety rating, but the flagship GT remains untested for both our market and New Zealand.

The discrepancy is down to the GT’s dual-motor powertrain, which significantly alters the electric SUV’s frontal structure and therefore requires the flagship to be tested independently of the single-motor Select and Premium grades.

Said variants garnered adult occupant, child occupant, vulnerable road user protection and safety assist scores of 92, 88, 69 and 82 per cent respectively, which for the most part pleased ANCAP testers, but the EV’s frontal structure was said to pose a “relatively high risk to occupants of an oncoming vehicle”.

ANCAP also noted the Mach-E’s reverse autonomous emergency braking (AEB) and driver fatigue systems don’t default ‘ON’ each time the vehicle’s started, which mean it wasn’t awarded any points in these areas.

Five stars were also awarded to the Haval Jolion hybrid variants, the Genesis GV70 Electrified and the Genesis G80 Electrified, meaning all three ‘alternative powertrain’ models match their combustion-engined counterparts in terms of safety.

In the case of the Jolion, the two hybrids demonstrated similar levels of protection across the board to the petrol-powered small SUV variants – 90 per cent for adult occupant protection, 84 per cent for child occupant protection, 64 per cent for vulnerable user protection, 92 per cent for safety assist.

It was a similar story for the battery-powered GV70 mid-size luxury SUV, which netted category scores of 89, 89, 64 and 87 per cent respectively.

The G80 Electrified large electric sedan, however, lost a couple of marks due to the automatic door locking function not releasing after the frontal offset crash test.

However, that wasn’t enough to prevent the G80 EV achieving a five-star rating – 91 per cent for adult occupant protection, 86 per cent for child occupant protection, 77 per cent for vulnerable user protection, 80 per cent for safety assist – and Genesis says it’s already looking into rectifying the issue.

ANCAP CEO Carla Hoorweg said these latest results mean there are now more than 100 EV, hybrid or plug-in hybrid models available in Australia with a five-star safety rating.

All of the cars mentioned in this report were tested against ANCAP’s 2020-2022 protocols.

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