Choosing a car isn’t easy. There’s a huge number of things you need to think about like the brand, style, type of fuel, and more. But one of the most important factors is how safe the motor is for you and your loved ones.
As car leasing experts proud to offer thousands of reliable and safe family cars to our customers each year, we gathered information on 196 cars and 40 manufacturers from over 5 years of safety data, taking a deep dive into Euro NCAP’s data from 2016 to 2021. This factored in adult and child passenger safety, vulnerable pedestrian safety and safety assistance equipment to find out which is the safest car manufacturer and type of car to help give you peace of mind when picking your next vehicle.
Tesla & Polestar Are The Safest Car Manufacturers According To Euro NCAP
The iconic electric-first brand, Tesla has come out as the Euro NCAP’s safest car brand tied with Polestar, a Swedish EV manufacturer who’s owned by Volvo Cars. Both companies scored an impressive 87% safety rating out of a possible 100%.
Lexus, the luxury division of Toyota, came in third with their safety rating of 86%. The Lexus E5 and Lexus UX models each scored in the mid to high 80s helping in their overall high score.
Closely on Lexus’ tail, Genesis and Volvo scored an 85% safety rating. This is particularly impressive for Volvo as their tested range is much bigger than others at the top of the list.
Hybrids Are The Safest By Fuel Type
Hybrids were pushed up by their all-around safety records with models like the Lexus E5 with 86% and the Toyota Prius at 84%.
Electric vehicles followed with a 78% safety record. Although two EVs were in the top five safest cars, the Tesla Model 3 and Polestar 2, lower scoring models like the Citroen e-Mehari 56% and the Aiways U5 at 61% pushed the overall score down.
Petrol and diesel cars came in last with a 75% safety rating. It’s worth noting that due to the much larger number of traditional fuel models available, the score was affected. They also had both the top-scoring and lowest scoring models for safety available.
Coupes Are The Safest Style Of Car
Surprisingly, coupes came out as the safest style of car available thanks to the high scoring BMW 4 Series - the series had an average score of 86%. Next up we had saloons at 84%, closely followed by estates at 81%.
You may have thought SUVs would lead due to their size and power, however, they came in fourth with a 78% rating. This was pushed down by the likes of the Jeep Wrangler and its 50% safety score.
The least safe style of car, according to the NCAP data, is an MPV or Multi Purpose Vehicle. These cars are typically geared towards families as they’re people carriers, however, their score was brought down by the likes of the Fiat Doblo at 51%.
What Is Euro NCAP?
The European New Car Assessment Programme known as the Euro NCAP is a voluntary organisation that’s responsible for testing out the safety of new vehicles. They assess the safety of passengers, children, vulnerable road users and safety assistance like lane support and speed assistance.
The Euro NCAP carries out real-world tests and damage tracking, making them one of the world’s leading authorities on car safety.
Methodology
We used the Euro NCAP data from 2016 to 2021 to create our safety scores. We combined the adult safety, child safety, vulnerable pedestrian safety and the safety equipment scores to create a percentage score. For the brand, fuel type and body type, we used the average scores of all models tested. 196 cars were tested from 40 manufacturers.
