Hyundai i30 sets ANCAP benchmark for Koreans
BY DAVID HASSALL | 3rd Jun 2008
No Australian-built car has yet achieved a five-star rating, with most of the top-scoring cars to date being built in Europe or Japan.
Mitsubishi’s Lancer has also been awarded five stars in the latest results announced overnight under the Australasian New Car Assessment Program (ANCAP), giving its Australian subsidiary a welcome shot in the arm as it establishes itself as a full-line importer.
Base models of both the Hyundai i30 and Mitsubishi Lancer, however, are rated at only four stars because they are not fitted with curtain airbags as standard. In the case of the base i30, the lack of standard electronic stability control also prevents it from scoring five stars.
While the top i30 SR model (priced from $26,490) comes with both ESC and curtain airbags as standard, they cost an extra $1100 on the entry-level SX ($18,990) while the mid-range SLX ($23,490) has ESC but not curtain airbags, which cost $800 on their own.
Michael Case, chief engineer of the RACV, which is a partner in ANCAP, acknowledged that there was an argument in favour of rating only base versions rather than better-equipped flagship models, but saw more benefits under the current regime.
“There is an argument for that, but at the same time it’s good for people to know about the performance of all of the models and be able to make a choice,” Mr Case told GoAuto.
“If we just rated the base model four stars and didn’t comment about how the airbag version performed then people wouldn’t know that it is that much better.
“Hopefully it encourages consumers to buy a version that has the curtain airbags so they’ve got five-star performance, and we’d also like to see Hyundai make the curtain airbags standard in all models (of the i30).” Mr Case said it was significant that a Korean car had achieved a five-star rating and noted that it came about as a direct result of pressure on the parent company by Hyundai Australia.
Originally, the i30 had only a four-star rating but Hyundai Australia recognised that the only thing preventing it from achieving five stars was the driver-side knee protection and convinced the factory to change the outer surfaces of the lower dash on the production line in Korea.
“I think with i30 it’s a real step forward to be the first five-star result for a Korean product,” said Mr Case.
“In the past, Korean products have been criticised for not being up to their competition in areas of assessment, but I think they have targeted key things in safety and environment and certainly have got the people and the facilities within their parent company to be able to do these things.
“I think the challenge here was to convince the factory that this was required for the Australian market. They’re very active in the fleet market and many fleet companies are setting a minimum requirement on safety performance of at least four stars on ANCAP, and ideally five stars.
“If you want to be in the fleet market you need to have that level of safety performance and it’s an area where the Korean-sourced cars haven’t been before. So, not only do you have them at the required four-star level, they’re (now) at the higher five-star level, which fleets will give preference to, so there are some marketing advantages to them achieving this as well as demonstrating that they can do the same thing as their competition from other parts of the world, including Japan.
“That work (on knee protection) was initiated by Hyundai Australia. They know the importance of achieving five stars in the local market and they knew their product was capable of doing that. They just had this technical issue to overcome and worked closely with their parent company in Korea to make the modifications necessary to achieve five stars. They have now done that and that’s a real achievement for Hyundai.
“I think it’s really significant because it demonstrates their ability to do it. Hyundai is a significant player, the sixth-largest vehicle manufacturer in the world, and has demonstrated that they can build cars with five-star safety.
“If they can do it with the i30, there’s absolutely no reason why Hyundai can’t progressively achieve five-star performance for all of their other products. It’s just a matter of committing themselves to progressively designing their vehicles to do it. You can’t change an existing design easily, but the real opportunity is on new models. I’m hoping it will be the start of other Hyundai products that also get five stars.
“That will also create some competition in Korea with their main competitor, which is GM-Daewoo, and hopefully they will also be able to get to this level. They’re a little further behind.
“One of their products sold here is the Holden Barina, which only scored two stars and that’s a long way off the minimum level of four stars, but one of their other products sold here as the Holden Epica just managed four stars, so they’re catching up and they will want to do the same thing that Hyundai are doing.” Mr Case said that GM Daewoo is the worst of the Korean manufacturers in terms of crash safety.
“GM Daewoo, with the Barina being tested here and the two-star result, have taken it on board to significantly improve the performance of their products and I know that they’re working towards that.
“I understand that there will be an upgraded version of the Barina coming soon and we’ll be looking to test that and find out first-hand what improvements they’ve made. And they know we’re going to do that.” The appointment 18 months ago of product engineer Hee-Loong Wong was one of the key factors in Hyundai Australia achieving the five-star raring for the i30.
Mr Woong previously worked for Subaru Australia and was responsible for that company achieving five-star ANCAP ratings for its entire model line-up.
Hyundai Motor Company Australia director of sales and marketing Kevin McCann said that the five-star rating was very important for the company as it seeks to raise its profile above the previous “cheap and cheerful” image.
“For an up-and-coming brand like Hyundai, we are continually striving to prove that our cars are at least as well-engineered, at least as quality-built and at least as safe as all of the major players, so this type of result for us is evidence of that and it gives us the ability to communicate to the market much more confidently,” Mr McCann told us.
“There’s an understanding now that we are a global automotive concern and we have the ability to build cars that meet the same customer requirements as the best of the other global concerns.
“We’d like to see five-star rating be possible on every new model passenger car that we launch from now into the future.
“Safety, along with fuel efficiency and emissions, are three areas where we have the technology available to take a leading position so we’re trying to build the presence of our brand from a different level to what it’s historically been in this market and we believe that by offering market-leading initiatives in those three areas we’ll be able to achieve a higher understanding of the value of the Hyundai brand.” Mr McCann said that Hyundai Australia was alerted to the possibility of scoring five stars after Euro NCAP test results showed that the i30 was just a couple of points short of the Kia Cee’d, a sister model to the i30 that scored five stars.
This revealed the problem with the knee panel, which required some different surface materials, but no structural changes.
“We have worked very closely with ANCAP to see where we needed to do more work on the car to get it to a point where it could be successfully tested for five-star,” said Mr McCann.
“In the end, it was a very simple fix. We needed to change the material of the padding and slightly increase the volume of the padding, which also required a modification of the outer coating.
“In our learning curve on this subject, we’ve found that there’s very little in the way of structural things between four-star and five-star.” Despite the company’s achievement and its stated commitment to safety as a key platform in its future, Mr McCann said there are other issues involved in fitting the base i30 with ESC and curtain airbags.
“That’s very much up to the market to determine,” he said. “Our ambition, of course, is to fit everything we can to the cars to make them as safe as possible, but there’s a cost factor and we have to assess whether the customer is prepared to pay the price.” The RACV’s Michael Case said that fleet operators in particular are well aware of their duty of care in relation to occupational health and safety, and this is having a strong influence on companies like Hyundai that rely on fleet sales.
“Hyundai Australia now have engineering people on the ground to understand the local market and have been trying to influence the parent company to provide the vehicles they know are required here,” said Mr Case.
“Hyundai over a period of time have established good market penetration in Australia, but that includes an increasing presence in fleet markets and I think they’re very nervous that they need to have their vehicles at the required safety level to maintain that market and to grow it more.
“The Elantra at this stage is only a three-star vehicle and that’s an issue for them selling to fleet markets that require four stars.
“Selling to fleets in Australia is increasingly based on safety performance and in order to keep competitive they know they have to produce high-level safety.
“Their challenge really has been to convince the parent company that that’s what is required locally, given that Australia would be a fairly small market to the Koreans. Upgrading vehicle safety for a relatively small export market might not seem a high priority to them, but Hyundai Australia know they have to do it to compete locally.” ANCAP also confirmed five-star ratings for Australian-spec versions of the Renault Laguna III and the Holden Astra, which had previously been tested by Euro NCAP, as well as four-star results for the Kia Rondo (with side curtain airbags) and Ford Focus (with side airbags).