China's MG ZS EV a safer bet than others

The MG ZS EV has received a maximum five-star safety rating from the Australasian New Car Assessment Program (ANCAP), which makes the full-electric version of the Chinese-built small SUV a better performer than the combustion-engined models built on the same platform.

The regular MG ZS and the recently-launched ZST turbo models are both rated at a lower four stars, based on crash testing conducted back in 2017.

An ANCAP spokesperson told carsales that the five-star rating for the electric model – which was launched late last year and is the cheapest electric car on the market – was based on separate testing conducted in Europe in 2019 and had only just been published in Australia.

“This follows the receipt of all technical information we sought from MG which was slightly delayed following its local launch,” the spokesperson said.

“The five-star rating for the ZS EV is based on Euro NCAP testing conducted in 2019, hence the 2019 date stamp.

“The MG ZS EV offers different structural characteristics to its ICE [internal combustion engine] siblings and therefore underwent a full suite of tests which resulted in good performance across all key areas of assessment.

“Petrol variants of the ZS as rated by ANCAP in 2017 did not perform as well as the ZS EV, offering slightly poorer performance in the frontal offset test which precluded it from achieving five stars. 

“The ZS rated in 2017 also lacked some of the Safety Assist features that the ZS EV now has as standard.”

The MG Pilot driver assistance systems on the ZS EV include autonomous emergency braking (AEB), adaptive cruise control, front collision warning, speed assist and lane departure warning.

MG Motor Australia and New Zealand chief executive Peter Ciao said: “This unique driver assistance suite is key to the additional safety of our range, so we’re delighted to see the ZS EV recognised with the highest possible safety rating.”

MG also claims that the “ZS EV’s high level of safety is also thanks to its battery safety measures, and the high-strength cabin and torsional rigidity of the MG ZS chassis design”.

The EV scored 90 per cent for adult occupant protection, 84 per cent for child occupant protection, 64 per cent for vulnerable road user protection and 71 per cent in the ‘Safety Assist’ category.

The technical report shows that it scored a ‘good’ rating for adult protection in all areas of the full-width frontal crash test, with the exception of the rear passenger’s chest (rated ‘weak’), while the oblique pole test also elicited ‘good’ protection in all areas bar the driver’s chest region (‘weak’).

The side impact test brought ‘good’ results across the board.

For child occupant protection, it was ‘good’ in all critical body regions except the neck of the 10-year-old dummy (‘marginal’), while there were mixed results in the vulnerable road user testing, with particular concern (‘weak’ and ‘poor’) levelled at protection of pedestrians “at the base of the windscreen and on the stiff windscreen pillars”.

The AEB system’s overall performance was classified as ‘marginal’ in terms of pedestrian and cyclist protection, while in highway speed scenarios it was rated as ‘good’.