Chery Omoda 5 gets five-star safety score despite airbag fail, dashboard danger, lane keeping concern

The Chery Omoda 5 small SUV has been awarded the maximum five-star safety rating by the Australasian New Car Assessment Program (ANCAP) following CarsGuide's call to have 'faulty' lane keeping tech revised.

The result represents an enormous leap in safety improvement over Chery's previous models such as the J1 hatchback and J11 SUV, neither of which were able to attain more than three stars. The disastrous safety results and poor sales forced Chery to exit the country in 2013.

The Omoda 5 arrived in February this year and now, 10 years later, Chery has raised safety standards significantly, although ANCAP's report still leaves much room for improvement for the model.

According to ANCAP, the Omoda 5 performed 'Adequate' to 'Good' in the frontal offset impact test, but it was noted the dashboard could cause injury.

"Concerns were noted however for the design of the dashboard, where hard elements beneath could become a potential source of knee injury risk to occupants of different sizes to that of the driver and front passenger test dummies," the report said.

"Penalties were applied to reflect this additional risk."

There was also concern from ANCAP when a curtain airbag failed to open.

"In the side impact test, injury measurements recorded by the test dummy for key body regions were 'Good', however during this test, the head-protecting side curtain airbag did not open as intended, and a penalty was applied – reducing the score for the driver's head in both the frontal offset test and oblique pole tests to 'Adequate'," the report said.

Another area of concern was the lane keeping assistance system. CarsGuide called for Chery to address the system after reviewers tested the Omoda 5 in March this year. The system was found to be unpredictable and over-reactive.

Chery responded to CarsGuide's calls, explaining that new software had been developed to address the fault.

"In certain driving conditions in Australia the ADAS software in the MY2023 OMODA 5 may activate causing a false alarm," Chery told CarsGuide.

"To improve the driving experience, we have developed a software update which enhances the logic to be better adapted to Australian conditions."

CarsGuide asked Chery if any Omoda 5s had been sold to the public with the fault.

"None of these cars were sold to the market," a spokesperson for Chery told CarsGuide.

 "Regarding the false alarms, I can assure you that this was a recalibration issue that has since been addressed. Updates were made across all vehicles before hitting the market to further enhance the software logic to be better adapted to Australian conditions."

 In its own testing ANCAP found the lane keeping system did not respond to some emergency scenarios and only managed a score of 63 per cent.

"Following an update to the lane support software running in Australian-supplied vehicles from April 2023, additional emergency lane keeping (ELK) and lane keep assist (LKA) tests were conducted to assess any potential differences in safety-related vehicle performance," the report reads.

"The additional tests, conducted locally, showed vehicles with the updated software maintained a similar level of performance to the test results obtained in initial European testing, though the local vehicle did not respond in a small number of emergency lane keeping test scenarios and this is reflected in a reduced score for ELK.  The overall 'Safety Assist' score remains within the five-star threshold."

It should also be pointed out that the Omoda 5 was tested under 2020-2022 criteria not 2023.