Chinese Cars Were A Laughingstock. Now They’re Dominating Safety Charts

• Chinese-made cars, and EVs in particular, dominate this year’s European safety charts.
• Euro NCAP, the independent body that crashes cars to find out how safe they are, has given 18 five-star awards so far this year.
• Most of them are Chinese-made EVs.

Chinese cars used to be known for being ripoffs of Western cars. Many of them were janky, with designs that looked like they were phoned in, and powertrains that had a habit of not working. Safety was not on the priorities list, either, but that has changed dramatically in the last few years.

We’ve been saying for a while here on InsideEVs that the Chinese car industry is way ahead of the United States. And now, looking at the latest crash test results from Europe, it’s clearer than ever that Chinese companies are here to disrupt the old way of doing business.

This used to be a working Voyah Courage EV. While you might have never heard of it, it got five stars from Euro NCAP.

Photo by: Euro NCAP

Five stars. That’s what most automakers out there are aiming for when bringing a new car to the market. Customers who are concerned about their safety are also looking for the same thing. Euro NCAP’s crash test safety rating, along with its global equivalents such as Latin NCAP and ANCAP, is the gold standard in the industry, and it’s one that can make or break an up-and-coming automaker’s future. The same goes for the American IIHS and NHTSA testing.

So here comes the reality check. Out of the 28 cars tested by Euro NCAP this year, 18 got the highly coveted five-star rating, and 13 of them are made in China. Moreover, out of the five-star models, 11 are Chinese-made EVs.

Sure, some of the models on this list are the products of European or American companies, such as the Tesla Model 3, Mini Cooper E, and Polestar 3, but there’s no denying that the engineering that went into them had a great deal of input from China. Moreover, let’s not forget that a fair few Chinese-based automakers also made the cut, including Zeekr, Voyah, Geely, Cherry, Hongqi and Jaecoo. MG, which is British at heart but based in China, also has a five-star EV.

Some of you might remember an old episode of Top Gear where two of the hosts went to China to test the country’s cars. Suffice it to say, it was anything but impressive. However, in that segment, which aired more than a decade ago, the hosts agree on the fact that “everybody will be driving Chinese cars,” seeing the industry’s rate of progress.

So, here we are now. China went from the laughingstock of the car industry to a leader in EV powertrains, in-car infotainment systems, and now safety ratings. This leaves Western automakers to play catch-up with a country they once dominated.