Euro NCAP has revealed its Best in Class cars – the safest models it tested in 2024

Source Credit: SAFETYWISSEN

DTS DAQ & sensors are used worldwide to support a variety of NCAP regulation testing, including our SLICE6 in-dummy DAS solutions for occupant safety testing.

In 2024, five cars from China, Germany, and Japan set the standard for vehicle safety. Best in Class winners included the Škoda Superb and Volkswagen Passat (winning jointly), the MAZDA CX-80, and the ZEEKR X. The most outstanding performance was set by the Mercedes-Benz E-Class, which topped the overall safety score of cars tested last year [1].
“The automotive industry had a challenging year in 2024 marked by weak consumer confidence and difficult economic conditions. Given these difficulties, Euro NCAP finds it especially encouraging that car makers continue to place significant emphasis on safety innovation and equipping cars with the newest safety systems. This firmly places consumer safety at the forefront of automobile design, as it ought to be.”
– Dr. Michiel van Ratingen, Secretary General Euro NCAP

The winner of Euro NCAP’s overall best performance in safety in 2024 was the Mercedes-Benz E-Class. The E-Class, an Executive car, achieved the best overall score, a weighted average of the four safety categories that Euro NCAP’s experts assess: Adult Occupant Protection, Child Occupant Protection, Vulnerable Road User Protection, and Safety Assist Technologies.

In the Large Family Car class, the Best in Class was achieved by the Volkswagen Passat and its partner the Škoda Superb. The two vehicles, built on the same platform and part of the Volkswagen Group, delivered the same class-leading safety performance.

Chinese car makers saw another impressive performance with the very first electric pick-up tested in Europe by Euro NCAP. The Maxus eTERRON 9, a five-seat, four-door pick-up truck, scored highly across all four safety categories.

In 2024, there were no contenders for the Best in Class award in the Small Family Car class as the top-scoring vehicles had achieved a red-body part score in their safety testing, making them ineligible.

To define the ‘Best in Class,’ a calculation is made of the weighted sum of the scores in the four areas of active and passive safety assessment: Adult Occupant, Child Occupant, Pedestrian, and Safety Assist. This sum is used as the basis for comparison of the vehicles. Cars qualify for ‘Best in Class’ based on their rating with safety equipment that is fitted as standard.

Please note that from 2026 Euro NCAP will be changing the way we make our safety assessment. The five-star rating however will continue to remain a valid and trusted indicator of a new car’s safety performance.

[1] Some categories may not be represented as Euro NCAP has tested too few cars of that class in 2024.

More Information: euroncap.com/press
Author/Source: Euro NCAP

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Seal Beach, CA – According to the World Health Organization, more than 5,000 pedestrians are killed each week worldwide. The Governors Highway Safety Association reported that pedestrian fatalities in the USA have risen by 41% since 2008 – the highest in 30 years.

Starting in 2022, Euro NCAP announced that it will adopt the new advanced Pedestrian Legform Impactor (aPLI) in its testing. The aPLI weighs 24.9kg (55 lb), compared with the 13.2kg (29 lb) Flex PLI, and the mass distribution has been refined to be more biofidelic, top to bottom. The structural design has also been simplified to improve repeatability and reproducibility of results.

Like its Flex PLI predecessor, the aPLI features integrated data acquisition and sensors from DTS. The aPLI legform supports SLICE NANO, along with the 6DX PRO six degrees of freedom sensor package and the ARS PRO uniaxial angular rate sensor

Using the SLICE NANO stack extender, a special DTS mounting hardware solution designed for applications with limited height restrictions, the modular sensor layers can be split into two stacks, but still require only one BASE+. The standard aPLI configuration includes 18 sensor channels focused on three primary types of measurements: injury assessment, flight dynamics and vehicle impact

Embedding the data acquisition into the test article minimizes exposed cables throughout the leg and eliminates any trailing cables that could affect the launch.  DTS offers a complete turnkey solution engineered to maintain proper mass, center of gravity and moments to help advance pedestrian safety testing.