Five-star safety for GWM Cannon Alpha ute

The GWM Cannon Alpha ute has officially been awarded five-stars for safety in Australia, becoming the first electrified dual-cab ute tested and rated by local independent crash test authority, ANCAP.

All variants of the Chinese-built dual-cab ute, which has been on sale in Australia since mid-2024 in both turbo-diesel or petrol-electric hybrid form, have been stamped with five-stars, with ANCAP saying the Cannon Alpha displayed similar levels of performance to other dual-cab utes tested against 2023-2025 criteria.

The maximum score comes thanks to a full suite of driver assist and safety aids, which include seven airbags (including a front centre airbag), front and rear autonomous emergency braking (AEB), lane keep assist, blind spot monitoring, traffic sign recognition, parking sensors, and a 360-degree parking camera.

Praising its protection of occupants – in particular, smaller passengers – ANCAP says the Cannon Alpha scored 93 per cent in the child occupant protection portion of testing, the same score awarded to the related GWM Tank 500 SUV.

The safety authority says full points were awarded for both child dummies in the frontal offset (head-on) and side impact (T-bone) crash tests, while the Cannon Alpha also scored well in the tech department, thanks to its child protection detection system which provides the driver with audible and text-based notification if a child is inadvertently left within the vehicle.??

Meanwhile, its safety assist systems scored 81 per cent, with ‘good’ marks for its overall performance in emergency lane-keeping and braking intervention scenarios.

An 84 per cent score for adult occupant protection and 82 per cent for vulnerable road user protection round out its performance, with ANCAP noting the pick-up achieved full points for protection of the driver in side impact testing and the passenger in the front offset test.

However, as ‘a large and heavy vehicle, its overall performance in the frontal offset test was tempered by its risk to occupants of a struck vehicle with the maximum 8.00 point out of 8.00 vehicle-to-vehicle compatibility penalty applied’.

“This rating marks a significant step for the popular?utility?segment with the GWM Cannon Alpha being the first hybrid ute to achieve a five-star ANCAP safety rating," said ANCAP CEO, Carla Hoorweg.

“GWM and its vehicle designs have improved markedly over the past decade, and this five-star result for the Cannon Alpha is evidence of this.”

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