The flagship Chery Tiggo 8 Pro MAX has received another feather in its cap.
On Friday, 24 May, this model received a prestigious five-star rating, the highest possible, from the Australasian New Car Assessment Program (ANCAP).
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 desirable Chery 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 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.
The five-star rating shows how Chery’s relentless pursuit of safety through the use of cutting-edge technologies and materials is paying dividends.
The Tiggo 8 is built on Chery’s T1X platform, which is renowned for its lightweight, rigid, modular characteristics. Despite its light weight, the Tiggo 8 Pro Max boasts exceptional body strength and stability. 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.
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 and best equipped 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.
The Chery Tiggo 8 Pro range has already received a full five-star rating from the Chinese New Car Assessment Programme.
