The i3 scored very high marks for passenger safety in all crash tests, so why only a 4 of 5 star rating? |
Most people don't want to waste time reading crash test scores, they usually just look at the star rating. If they see a five star rating, they assume the car is as safe as it should be and anything less than a 5 out of 5 can be viewed as a failure on the manufacturers part to produce a car that's as safe as possible. So what went wrong here? We've been hearing how strong the CFRP passenger shell is and how incredibly well it will protect the passengers in the event of a crash for a couple years now. In fact I personally had a lengthy conversation with BMW board member Ian Robertson about this and he went on and on about how incredibly well the i3 did in their internal crash tests, so why now did it not do well? The truth is, the car actually did very well in crash tests, in fact it did actually score a 5 star rating in crash tests for passenger protection, but the overall combined score fell a couple points under the threshold for 5 stars.
What held them back? When I tell you you'll either laugh off your seat or shake your head at the foolishness that allowed them to miss the coveted 5 star rating. Ready? Here goes: For some crazy reason, there is no rear seat seatbelt warning system on the i3. Most cars today have this feature so that omission cost the i3 points. That, plus the fact that the speed limit notification is optional in most European countries (that is the feature that displays the current speed limit of the road you are driving on and it's a standard feature on all US i3's) conspired to give the i3 an extremely low score in the "Safety Assist" category. Those two oversights caused the overall score to dip just below the 85% needed to achieve a 5 star rating. The fact that they were rated 4 of 5 stars really had nothing to do with how the passengers fared in the crash tests, because the i3 actually had high scores in that area. In fact, the i3 achieved a higher score for passenger safety than a Chevy Volt, which did achieve an overall 5 star rating. (see graph below for comparison)
The BMW i3 compared to the Chevy Volt in the Euro NCAP safety rating |
BMW
BMW i3
Chevy Volt
crash test
Euro NCAP
safety rating
-
5 (
88 ratings )
- Wednesday, November 27, 2013
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