Five stars for muscle car

Variants of the Ford Mustang Mach-E down under have been awarded top safety ratings by ANCAP.

Five stars for the battery electric vehicle (BEV) was first published in December for New Zealand variants.

But with the Mustang Mach-E now available to Australians, ANCAP has extended the rating to cover both countries, excluding the GT.

Full points were scored for protection offered to the driver in the side impact and oblique-pole tests, as well as child occupants in the side impact and frontal offset tests.

The front structure of the Mustang Mach-E, pictured, presented a relatively high risk to occupants of an oncoming vehicle and a 3.45-point penalty out of four was applied. 

Examining its collision-avoidance capability, it offered good performance for its lane keeping and AEB capability. However, its AEB backover and driver-fatigue systems do not default to “on” at the start of each journey so points were not awarded in these areas.

Five-star ratings have also been available for ICE variants of the GWM Haval Jolion, Genesis G80 and Genesis GV70 – applicable from the time of local market introduction. 

These ratings now extend to the Jolion Hybrid, G80 Electrified and GV70 Electrified following additional destructive crash testing.

The additional two tests undertaken on the Jolion Hybrid demonstrated comparable safety performance to the petrol variants. 

The Genesis G80 Electrified and GV70 Electrified also showed comparable levels of safety. But the post-crash assessment of the G80 Electrified revealed the automatic door-locking function did not release following the frontal-offset crash test. Genesis is undertaking a production fix.

“With these new results, there are now move than 100 battery electric, hybrid, plug-in hybrid and hydrogen models rated by ANCAP, which hold five-star ratings – providing plenty of choice to consumers across a range of brands, models and price-points,” says chief executive officer Carla Hoorweg.