Australia’s vehicle safety accreditor, ANCAP, has officially given the Chery Omoda 5 a full five-star safety rating, in spite of some issues popping up with the emergency lane-keep system, and even the airbags.
The company says that it has launched a number of software patches for the Omoda 5, after the initial launch of the Chinese compact SUV was met with key issues with the safety tech for some automotive journalists.
In our road testing of the Chery Omoda 5, there were several issues surrounding the onboard sensors and processing unit, which was prone to misbehaving in our limited time testing it.
The company updated the Omoda 5’s software in April, which has since been put to the test by ANCAP, with the Omoda 5 picking up a five-star safety rating.
All up, it scored 87% for adult occupant protection, 88% for child occupant protection, 68% for vulnerable road user protection and 83% for safety assist, for all 1.5-litre petrol variants sold in Australia.
ANCAP ran a series of tests on the updated emergency lane-keep (ELK) and lane-keep assist (LKA) systems, noting that “performance in most LSS test scenarios was similar to the performance observed in vehicles fitted with earlier software.”
ANCAP added that “the vehicle did not respond in a small number of ELK test scenarios and this is reflected in a reduced ELK score.”
The Omoda 5 recorded “sound” results in its frontal offset crash test, though, according to ANCAP, “concerns were noted for the design of the dashboard, where hard elements beneath could become a potential source of knee injury risk to occupants”
ANCAP also noted that while the Omoda recorded solid results for its side impact test, “the head-protecting side curtain airbag did not open as intended, and a penalty was applied” that reduced its front offset and oblique pole results to adequate.
In terms of the updated safety tech, ANCAP said the AEB system performance was ‘good,’ while the pedestrian and cyclist detection systems were responsive.
“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,” says ANCAP’s chief, Carla Hoorweg.
“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,” she added, in reference to the Chery J11’s two-star rating and the J1’s three-star ratings in 2011.
