Euro NCAP closes the year with a bang and launches no fewer than eleven new cars towards the wall. The vast majority of them received a good score of four to five stars, but two models stood out in a negative way: the Renault Zoe and Dacia Spring.
An NCAP score of zero stars nowadays only occurs on other parts of the world. Recently Fiat in South America, for example, went home with 0 stars for the Argo and the Cronos. Global NCAP was also not satisfied with the Renault Kwid. That car, however, could pin two more stars to his chest. Its European brother Dacia Spring is considerably less successful in the Euro NCAP test with one star. NCAP called the result “downright problematic”, with a “high risk of life-threatening injuries to the driver’s chest and the head of the rear passengers in a frontal impact”. The protection according to NCAP is also not adequate in the event of a side impact. Finally, substandard safety systems also contribute to the poor score.
Remains of a Renault Zoe.
More amazing is the 0 star rating for the Zoe. Euro NCAP threw the electric Renault against the wall again, because it received a major facelift in mid-2019. The new result is in stark contrast to the previous crash test of the Zoe from 2013, in which the model was awarded five stars. According to Euro NCAP, Renault even cut back on safety by installing a side airbag that no longer protects the head and chest, but only the latter. Furthermore, the damning verdict is that the Zoe offers poor protection overall in the event of a crash, does not protect vulnerable road users such as pedestrians well in a crash, and does not have good safety systems on board. In other words: substandard by today’s higher standards.
Michel van Ratingen, Secretary General of Euro NCAP, digs the Zoe and the Spring even further in his comment. “Renault was once synonymous with safety,” he says. “But these disappointing results for the Zoe and Dacia Spring show that safety is an afterthought in the group’s transition to electric models.” He draws a comparison with the Fiat 500e, which scores just four stars in this crash test.
Good scoring models
With the other nine models that Euro NCAP threw against the wall, it was just raining stars. The BMW iX, Genesis G70 and GV70, Mercedes-Benz EQS, Nissan Qashqai, Skoda Fabia and Volkswagen Caddy all achieved five stars. The Fiat 500e and MG Marvel R go home with four stars each.
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl