New Mahindra Pik-Up will bring five-star safety

The new 2025 Mahindra Pik-Up won’t come to Australia with anything less than five-star safety when it arrives Down Under by mid-2026, says the Indian car-maker’s APAC boss Joydeep Moitra.

Speaking to carsales at the company’s sprawling SUV Proving Track in India last week, Moitra said Mahindra will do whatever is required to ensure the brand’s next-generation ute – which was revealed in concept form in August – is capable of achieving a maximum five-star ANCAP safety rating.

That would represent a big step up from the current Mahindra Pik-Up, which has been ‘unrated’ by ANCAP since January 2023, after the independent auto safety body awarded it a two-star safety rating in 2008 and a three-star rating in 2012.

“The global pick-up will be five stars, so whatever is required; whatever number of airbags is required to get it into five-star will be there. It’s as simple as that,” Moitra told carsales.

“Whatever new things are coming up [for Australia] are built to that [five-star] level.”

To achieve a five-star ANCAP safety rating, Mahindra’s as-yet-unnamed new ute will need to be fitted with at least a front centre airbag and autonomous emergency braking (AEB), like the Mahindra XUV700 mid-size SUV but unlike the outgoing Pik-Up and the new Scorpio large off-road SUV on which the new ute will be based.

It will also need to be fitted with an expanding range of driver safety aids as part of ANCAP’s increasingly tough testing and scoring criteria.

Mahindra also says it’s working to add important safety tech to vehicles already on sale here – including the Scorpio, which was launched earlier this year as Australia’s cheapest large diesel four-wheel drive.

The Scorpio lacks advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) such as AEB, lane keeping, blind spot monitoring, rear cross traffic alert and adaptive cruise control, all of which are set to be fitted as part of a mid-life update, said Moitra.

“These are mid-cycle enhancements. There will be no shortcuts taken just to be quick into the market, no,” said Moitra.

“We’ll do our thorough work to make sure everything is being tested out, especially in Australian conditions, because ADAS has to be tested in Australia for Australian conditions.”

Moitra said it doesn’t make sense for Australian versions of the Scorpio to employ ADAS developed for European conditions.

“The amount of time that it needs to be designed, developed and then tested in Australia… that last part is the most important thing. It takes about six months to load in all the road data and get that into the system software, so clearly all that testing will be done.”

Sharp value has long been a key selling point for Mahindra, however, and Moitra admitted the Indian brand would still consider selling cars in Australia without a maximum five-star ANCAP safety rating – as a range of other auto brands now do.

“No,” replied Moitra when asked if Mahindra would refrain from launching a sub-five-star car in Australia in future.

“I think that it’s [about] finding the [right] customer that decides in that sense. We know that the cars are intrinsically very safe for the occupant.

“There’s no issues as such, so therefore it would not [stop Mahindra Australia selling a vehicle without five stars], but yes we are mindful of this and we have already addressed this in our product planning.”

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