ANCAP Safety has released five-star safety ratings for the new market arrivals Smart #1 and Smart #3.
These are the first ANCAP safety ratings for the Smart brand in 16 years and are the first vehicles with a Smart badge to reach five stars.
Both battery electric vehicles achieved solid scores across ANCAP’s multi-pillar assessment, placing them well within five-star bounds.
The Smart #3 small car, assessed against current 2023-2025 criteria, demonstrated high levels of occupant protection in physical crash tests, with a mix of Good and Adequate results recorded for adult and child protection across most crash scenarios.
However, a poor result was noted for occupant-to-occupant contact in the oblique pole test, as the centre airbag between the front seats did not prevent contact between the heads of the driver and the front passenger.
A similar mix of Adequate and Good occupant protection results was seen in the Smart #1 small SUV crash tests, with total points awarded for driver protection in the full-width frontal and side-impact tests and both child occupants in the frontal offset test.
This performance contributed to a high Adult Occupant Protection score of 96%, noting that Smart #1 was assessed against the earlier 2020-2022 rating criteria, as it was introduced into the European market ahead of Smart #3.
Both #1 and #3 are equipped with similar advanced safety technologies designed to actively avoid a collision with another vehicle, pedestrian, or cyclist.
Additional assessments examining the performance of the Smart #3’s direct driver monitoring system, cyclist anti-dooring warning, and motorcycle-detecting autonomous emergency braking (AEB) system were undertaken. The AEB Motorcycle tests showed good results.
The Smart #3 was also assessed for its ability to detect motorcycles in lane-keeping scenarios. Good performance was seen across the majority of test scenarios, yet Poor performance was recorded for the lower-speed overtaking motorcycle scenario.
AEB Backover—the ability to detect pedestrians and autonomously brake when reversing—is not standard on Smart #1 or Smart #3.
“These five-star results for the Smart #1 and Smart #3 will reassure buyers looking to purchase a new car from this brand. A pair of very sound safety results,” said Carla Hoorweg, ANCAP chief executive.
Five-star ANCAP safety ratings apply to all Smart #1 and Smart #3 vehicles on sale in Australia from September 2024.
