Recently, the New Car Assessment Program for Southeast Asian Countries (ASEAN NCAP), together with Nissan distributor Edaran Tan Chong Motor (ETCM), organised a press conference talking about the impressive safety performance of the latest Nissan to be put to the test, the Nissan Teana.
Tested late last year, the D-segment sedan scored a full five-star rating in the 40% offset frontal crash test at 64 km/h, for both adult occupant protection (AOP) and child occupant protection (COP); the latter is the first in the agency. In fact, the Teana scored a perfect 16 points in AOP, by default making it the highest-scoring that has ever, and will ever be tested by ASEAN NCAP.
The car tested was a Thai-market 2.0XL – which gets extra active safety kit like blind spot monitoring, lane departure warning and rear cross-traffic alert in addition to our standard six airbags and stability control – but the crash protection should be identical to Malaysian-market vehicles.
Child restraint system (CRS) specialist Yahaya Ahmad explained how the Teana managed to achieve such a remarkable score. “If you look at the crash test, you can see how the car interacts with the barrier – a lot of energy has been absorbed by the crumple zone in the engine area, which is why the energy transferred to the child sitting behind is very little,” he said.
“The Teana scores very well in kinematic/dynamic performance for both children and adults, which is very important in scoring good points. Whatever happens at the front, even if it is a total loss, is not a problem, as long as the occupant compartment where you sit has no deformation, so that you have enough survival space in a crash.”
Next, updates to the testing and rating system, both current and in the future, were talked about. The first change is that from 2015 onwards, the requirement for a three-star rating now includes passing the UN R95 side impact test – it was previously only needed for a four-star AOP rating.
Even bigger changes await – come 2017, the agency will use a single-rating system for each model for the entire region, replacing the different ratings used for cars that have differing safety equipment in different countries. This was outlined in the recent ASEAN NCAP 2017-2020 road map presented at an international conference in Bandung, Indonesia recently, and is said to be a natural progression of the programme.
There are plenty of reasons for this move, the first being to eliminate confusion among consumers in the region and to prevent miscommunication by certain manufacturers when marketing their vehicles.
“We found that the dual rating system has been manipulated by some manufacturers in their car advertisements,” Khairil said last week. “For example, a car model which received a three-star safety rating was marketed [with a five-star rating], which was actually awarded to a different variant of the same model.”
Earlier, Khairil told us that the agency also wanted to close the gap between the disparate safety standards of each country in the region, and that the single-rating system will provide the impetus to manufacturers to provide a similarly high safety specification to all countries. “We want to give the ball to the manufacturers. It’s their call,” he said.
Apart from standardising the ratings for all markets, ASEAN NCAP will also move to just a single overall rating that takes into account both the car’s AOP and COP performance. “It will be 50% for AOP and 25% for COP to ensure a vehicle receives the highest star award and also provides the best protection for the child inside a car,” he said.
The agency is also moving to incorporating the next driver assistance systems into its ratings – safety assist technologies (SAT) such as ABS, stability control, blind spot monitoring and automated emergency braking (AEB) will be evaluated by 2017, contributing another 25% to the overall rating.
“Crash avoidance is our next objective.” Khairil said. “This reflects our effort to put pressure on the car manufacturers to install more safety features and produce safer cars.”
So, there you have it – with the Nissan Teana maxing out the current scoring system, ASEAN NCAP is now moving to make its ratings tougher and more in step with new and upcoming technology. The future of safety in the region is getting more and more interesting by the minute, and we can’t wait to see where it goes next.
