ANCAP has awarded a five-star safety rating to the Jaecoo J7 plug-in hybrid range, but leaves the non-hybrid models without an official crash test rating.
Family Cars
Chinese brand Chery’s new sub-brand in Australia has released its first ANCAP result for the Jaecoo J7 medium SUV, however, only plug-in hybrid variants carry an ANCAP rating. Petrol-only versions of the Jaecoo J7 remain unrated.
Within ANCAP’s assessment categories, the Jaecoo J7 SLS plug-in hybrid scored an 81 per cent adult occupant protection rating, 85 per cent for child occupant protection, 80 per cent for vulnerable road user protection, and 84 per cent for safety assist systems.
Testing revealed ‘adequate’’ protection of the driver’s chest and lower legs in the front offset crash test, with ‘good’ protection recorded everywhere else.
In the full-width frontal test, the J7 received an adequate rating for the neck and chest of rear passengers, but good for other sections, and an overall good rating for front seat occupants.
The Jaecoo J7 is fitted with a centre airbag between front seat occupants, with its performance rated as good, while in side impact tests, adequate protection was provided in vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-pole impacts.
Child occupant protection was classed as good for all critical areas of both child dummies used (10-year-old and six-year-old representative dummies used); however, the neck of the 10-year-old dummy returned an adequate result.
A child presence detection system designed to alert the driver if an occupant has been left in the vehicle is fitted as standard, but the system in the J7 failed to meet ANCAP’s requirements, and no points were given for the fitment of the system.
The J7’s forward-facing autonomous emergency braking (AEB) system was rated as good. AEB backover protection in reverse was rated as poor. Good ratings for cyclist and motorcyclist lane-support protection were also awarded.
A system to prevent opening doors into a passing cyclist is also fitted, but failed to meet ANCAP’s performance requirements, with warnings issued too late. As such it was not awarded points in ANCAP’s assessment.
Unlike other Chery models that have used related models as the basis for their crash test results under a ‘related models’ system that allows similar models to share ratings based on technical data, the Jaecoo J7 has undergone its own testing, conducted by ANCAP’s European affiliate, Euro NCAP.
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Kez Casey migrated from behind spare parts counters to writing about cars over ten years ago. Raised by a family of automotive workers, Kez grew up in workshops and panel shops before making the switch to reviews and road tests for The Motor Report, Drive and CarAdvice.
