Why A $230,000 Maybach Did Worse Than A $14,000 Hyundai In This Safety Test

There are numerous facilities around the world that specialize in crash-testing cars and sharing the information gleaned from those tests with consumers and regulators. The gold standard of testing is the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety, which is known for its rigorous standards and engineering expertise. In China, there’s the DCAR Institute of Collision Safety, which produces similar tests but with a lot more YouTube-fueled fanfare.

DCAR’s most recent test, just published with English subtitles, pits 30 different cars from global brands against an 18-wheeler. Specifically, the cars are crashed directly into the back of a tractor-trailer equipped with a set of underride guards or Mansfield bars at about 34 mph. The bars are so named for the actress Jane Mansfield, who people think was decapitated in a crash with a tractor-trailer lacking such a device. In reality, Mansfield wasn’t decapitated, though she was killed and did suffer a serious head injury.

Chinese highways, like pretty much everywhere else, are dominated by these large trucks and, according to a study cited by DCAR, contribute to a death rate that’s four times higher than that of collisions between two cars. This makes sense as trucks have a much larger mass and, even with the bars so equipped, do not generally shed force in the same way that another car with modern safety equipment might.

DCAR bought two of every model they tested, from something as cheap as a $7,000 Chinese EV to as expensive as a $240,000 Range Rover, in order to perform both a traditional offset test and a more truck-specific test that guides the passenger-side a-pillar and glass right into the underside guards.

Chinese car companies and journalists have a bit of a chip on their shoulder due to years of European and American counterparts showing videos of China’s early cars failing at these tests like the one below:

Cars from China have since improved dramatically in terms of safety over the last decade and models from brands like BYD, which sell in Europe, tend to do as well as cars from European, American, and Japanese counterparts in EURO NCAP crash tests. DCAR isn’t exactly like EURO NCAP or the IIHS in that the company is more like a Cars.com if Cars.com was created by the same people who also gave us TikTok. This is why DCAR content is slightly more sensationalistic and, frankly, better produced.

It’s also why they can do a test as wild as this one, which starts with a Range Rover that costs as much as $240,000 in China.

While the Range Rover performs well on the traditional offset test, it gets absolutely hammered in the truck test, with the A-,B-, and even the C-Pillar failing. It’s so bad the sunroof comes off completely:

It’s not great, though it’s also important to realize that this isn’t a test automakers generally have to face. Safety is a moving target and both the IIHS and DCAR are always trying to push automakers to consider different scenarios. Ultimately, DCAR determined that the crash beam was too small for the car’s width and the body’s aluminum and steel sections failed at the places where the two different materials met.

This is an extremely difficult test and they seem to be picking on the Range Rover not because it’s British, but because it’s expensive. The video goes on to show similar failures from other large SUVs from Chinese automakers including the LiAuto L6, the Aito M7, and Haval Big Dog.

Those models are meant to compete with bigger luxury SUVs from Audi and Mercedes.

What about electric cars? The first one tested is the Zeekr 001, which is a Geely brand and thus benefits from being connected to Volvo. It’s almost a cliche to say that Volvos are safe and it’s always worth it to interrogate those claims. In our experience, Volvos earn that reputation through extensive testing and clever engineering.

Even with the help from Volvo and a stout A-pillar, the Zeekr suffers catastrophic damage. The testers noted that the car was “too heavy” right before it crashed and the car ended up hitting the truck with so much force it blew the truck’s tire.

What’s also interesting is that many of these cars are equipped with emergency call features similar to OnStar and, yet, when the car crashes the cars are so damaged that the operators can’t hear them.

The testers were also critical of the full glass moonroof designs on many of the cars due to the loss in structural rigidity during the crash.

Not only did the tests show massive failures in this specific test, but these failures were consistent across cars from different automakers, countries, and at all different price points. This includes, of course, a Mercedes-Maybach:

Amazingly, even though the A-pillar does deform, it does so in a way that absorbs a lot of kinetic energy. Between that and various other parts of the car shearing off, the B- and C-pillars remain completely intact (and if you’re in a Maybach, you’re probably in the backseat or the driver’s seat). The passenger in the front seat, however, didn’t fare quite as well.

Not done with Mercedes, the testers then try a G-Class, which is a big body-on-frame truck. It performs reasonably well due to a lot of the active safety systems and impresses the testers, with one noting that domestic Chinese automakers could learn from the German design.

Small crossovers, in particular, had issues with the test. The Honda CR-V that I own didn’t do so well, with the passengers being  hurt so badly that survivability would be “basically non-existent.” I’m not sure how different the Chinese joint-venture CR-V is from my CR-V, but it’s not encouraging. One crossover from Geely and the Toyota RAV4 from the joint venture there was acceptable.

Does anyone do better than just acceptable?

Surprisingly, one of the newest cars from a brand-new manufacturer performed somewhat well. The Xioami X7 is one of the most fascinating and interesting cars in the world, and DCAR’s testers found that its ability to direct the force upwards away from the passenger component was helpful in reducing the impact on the dummies in the car, although the big glass roof likely reduced the car’s effectiveness.

Less surprisingly, both the Tesla Model 3 sedan and the Volvo S60 had higher survivability in these incidents, but cheaper sedans like the Geely Emgrand and Hyundai Elantra both did well.

What did the testers ultimately learn? Lighter and smaller sedans seemed to counterintuitively perform better than larger SUVs, in large part due to the ability of the vehicles to use the frontal energy absorption zones to push the car down and away from the truck therefore shedding a lot of the force of the collision. Larger vehicles can also perform adequately, but many of these cars and SUVs were dinged for the extra weight or the construction of the A-pillar.

Again, this test isn’t one commonly done or required, which means that automakers aren’t necessarily considering a test that specifically targets the A-pillar like this. In most crashes, it’s assumed that something else (a door, the motor, the rear) will get hit first and therefore the airbags and safety restraint systems can deploy in advance of passenger cabin intrusion. As you can see in many of these tests, the airbags simply don’t have enough time to fully deploy before part of the truck is already inside the vehicle.

The testers acknowledge this and point out that the most expensive cars didn’t necessarily perform the best and that they hope automakers consider situations like this when designing updates to these vehicles.

Enjoy the full video because there’s a lot to be learned here:

(Hat tip to Dogapult in the Discord server)

Your Automatic Emergency Braking System Might Be Worse Than You Thought

Why Volvo Crash Tests EVs Differently Than Gas Cars

I Bet You Don’t Know The What The First Car Crash Tested By The NHTSA Was