By Otsile Kadiege

Chery recently announced that their seven-seater Tiggo 8 Pro Max received a prestigious five-star rating, the highest possible, from the Australasian New Car Assessment Program (ANCAP). The Tiggo 8 Pro MAX was introduced in South Africa as the brand’s flagship model in 2022 and updated in March 2024. It arrived in Australia in May this year and was tested soon thereafter.

The ANCAP star ratings indicate the level of safety a vehicle provides for occupants and other road users in the event of a crash, as well as its ability — through technology — to avoid or minimise the severity of a crash. This programme is one of the first to require a comprehensive list of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) as a prerequisite for testing.

The Tiggo 8 Pro MAX rating is based on the comprehensive destructive crash tests done on the Tiggo 7 Pro. The ANCAP authority evaluated the Tiggo 7 Pro tests (which shares the same platform) and considered additional technical data that is unique to the Tiggo 8 Pro MAX. After this initial assessment, the ANCAP conducted comprehensive pedestrian safety tests on the Tiggo 8 Pro MAX. With these comprehensive tests done, the rating applies to all Tiggo 8 variants available in South Africa such as the Tiggo 8 Pro Executive with a turbocharged 1.6 litre petrol engine, the Tiggo 8 Pro MAX with a turbocharged 2.0 litre petrol engine and the all-wheel drive model.

High-strength steel platform

The Tiggo 8 is built on Chery’s T1X platform, which is renowned for its lightweight, rigid, modular characteristics. Ultra-high-strength steel has been employed, which exhibits exceptional torsional stiffness of up to 21 000 Nm/deg. This third-gen high-strength steel integrated body cage was developed through more than a 100 000 experiments and accounts for more than 60 per cent of the vehicle’s body weight. The design also incorporates bamboo-inspired spacer panels to boost structural integrity.

Level-two autonomy

In the active safety department, Chery included virtually every ADAS feature that is associated with level two autonomous driving, including automatic emergency braking (AEB), adaptive cruise control (ACC), lane keeping assist (LKA), traffic jam assist (TJA) integrated cruise assist (ICA) and lane departure warning (LDW).

The Tiggo 8 Pro MAX also features four pre-tensioned force-limiting seatbelts and no fewer than ten airbags. Over and above the traditional six airbags, it features a driver knee airbag and second row side airbags with 6-second pressure retention technology.

A unique airbag between the front passengers has also been added, making this one of the safest vehicles in its class. This star of the Chery stable comes equipped with many other user-friendly features that enhance everyday driving safety such as the tyre pressure monitoring system (TPMS), which constantly measures the temperature and pressure of each tyre, as well as cornering lights that enhance night-time driving safety.