The Mahindra Scorpio-N was introduced in Australia in April this year, followed by a debut in New Zealand in August.The ANCAP safety rating applies to all variants of the SUV sold in these two countries, however, ANCAP’s assessment is based on six-seat variants available in Australia while New Zealand gets a seven-seat variant with a bench-type middle row.
ANCAP has pointed out the Australian-spec Scorpio-N misses out on ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) features like autonomous emergency braking (AEB) system, or a lane support system (LSS). Moreover, it also does not get a driver monitoring system (DMS), a speed limit information function (SLIF), child presence detection (CPD), along with seatbelt reminders for any second or third row seating positions.
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The Mahindra Scorpio-N (called Scorpio in Australia) scored 17.67 out of 40 points in Adult Occupant Protection, 39.27/49 in Child Occupant Protection, 14.94 out of 63 points for Vulnerable Road User Protection, 0 out of 18 for Safety Assist since it is not equipped with any form of active collision avoidance features.
“The Mahindra Scorpio was shown to provide a mix of Good, Acceptable, Marginal, Weak and Poor protection for adult occupants in the frontal offset, full width frontal, side impact and oblique pole crash tests. A high risk of serious injury was recorded for the head, neck and chest of the rear female passenger in the full width frontal test with a penalty applied for high seatbelt loading,” said ANCAP.
“The MG 5 [which was also recently tested by ANCAP] and Mahindra Scorpio were both released into the Australian and New Zealand new car markets for the first time this year, yet it’s clear that their safety offerings are some generations behind what we see with almost every new car on sale today.” ANCAP also highlighted the expectation from private consumers and fleet buyers in Australian and New Zealand of “best levels of safety”.
Here’s what Mahindra had to say about the Scorpio-N’s ANCAP crash test score –
- We are expecting a low rating for Scorpio by ANCAP, primarily due to the absence of AEB, ADAS & certain other functionalities. However, it’s important to note that these features were not mandatory as per Australian design regulations when the Scorpio was homologated in Australia.
- It is also important to note that ANCAP has released new testing protocols in 2023 which mandates the requirement of features like AEB to get a good score. Scorpio is among the first few vehicles to have been tested under the latest, more stringent protocols of ANCAP in 2023.
- The Global NCAP and ANCAP assessments differ significantly in their testing methodologies, safety equipment requirements, and scoring patterns. Consequently, the Scorpio’s high performance in GNCAP tests does not directly translate to the ANCAP framework. However the 5 star GNCAP rating suggests that its structure is crashworthy and its restraints provide the required protection for its occupants.
Mahindra has announced that it will be incorporating ADAS safety features in the ‘mid-life update’ of the Scorpio-N. The company claims that its future models, including the updated Scorpio-N, will not only comply with but aim to exceed the latest ANCAP safety norms.