Renault's presence in the country can be much worse than Peugeot Citroen, it is estimated that many people now think that this brand is about to collapse, in fact, Renault's influence in Europe is very high, in 2020 Renault Group's global sales are as high as 2.94 million vehicles, this figure definitely surprised many people, and more unexpected is the electric car, Renault ZORE with more than 100,000 units of sales beat Tesla MODEL 3 to become the best-selling electric vehicle in Europe in 2020, it can be said that the European version of wuling Hongguang MINI EV。
Recently, the European E-NCAP conducted a crash test on the 2021 Renault ZOE, and unexpectedly, this car directly received a safety rating of 0 stars! Why does a car with such poor safety become the top seller in Europe? I went to know renault with curiosity about ZOE.
Once had 5 stars
Now 0 stars
Renault ZORE was released in 2012, when the electric car is not as hot as it is now, and thought that Renault domestic manufacturers like to create ZORE through the way of oil to electricity, after all, it is very easy to reduce costs, but the big Renault Group is still a bit frugal, ZOE skips oil to electricity directly based on pure electric vehicle chassis development. Although the ZOE wheelbase is only 2588 mm and the endurance is less than 500 kilometers, the starting price in France is as high as 148,000 yuan, which is close to Volkswagen's latest ID.3 in China. The price is indeed very expensive, but the safety of the early models did not disappoint, and E-NCAP gave the 2013 ZOGEN 5-star safety rating.
Although the EU E-NCAP is not as well-known as the US IIHS, this does not mean that the ZOE safety performance has moisture, because the most difficult test of the E-NCAP is not a frontal collision, but a side column collision. The so-called column collision is to let the side of the body crash into the cylinder, due to the small impact area collision energy is too concentrated, the column collision will cause a large number of deformation of the body.
Electric vehicles are of a special nature, the battery pack is arranged at the bottom of the chassis, if the body is greatly deformed The battery pack may be damaged and spontaneously combusted, so the strength of the side of the electric vehicle body is particularly good, Renault ZOE is no exception, and the 5-star safety rating given by E-NCAP also proves this. So why is it that after a few years of retesting ZOE, the original 5 stars will suddenly be 0 stars?
In fact, the 2021 ZOE body has not changed much, the A pillar has not been significantly deformed during the collision, and the reason why E-NCAP has downgraded the safety evaluation of the new car is in the passenger's body restraint and the protection of the air bag. In a frontal collision with a barrier vehicle, the dummy in the ZOE driver's seat was seriously injured, with varying degrees of injuries to the thighs and calves, while the left side of the co-pilot's thigh was severely injured.
There is no problem with the performance of the ZOE body in the side bump, but the dummy head does not have a side air curtain to protect the window glass that directly hits... And the most stringent side column collision, the dummy head crashed into the steel structure side column in one go, very painful is certain! Serious injuries are also certain. In the seat whipping test, the neck of the rear dummy was seriously injured, the neck of the front dummy was also slightly injured, and the roof leaked in the overnight rain, and even the left dummy's head during the child seat test was seriously injured, and the injured parts were fatal.
The collision results show that the seat safety and safety configuration of the 2021 ZOE are obviously insufficient, and the collision cannot better restrain and protect the passenger's body, or it can also be said that the ZOE reduction is too serious. After reading the test results of ZOE, it is immediately reminiscent of domestic micro-electric vehicles, their bodies are very thin, and the safety configuration can almost be ignored...
The safety of cheap electric vehicles is not optimistic
Compared with gasoline cars of the same size, the safety of pure electric vehicles is better, because the battery lifts the entire weight of the car, and it will be ugly if the body strength crash test is not improved. However, this does not mean that the safety of those small and cheap electric vehicles will have a qualitative change, because the relative weight of electric vehicles has not changed, small electric vehicles have become heavier, compact, medium-sized and other electric vehicles have also become heavier, and the relative safety of small electric vehicles is actually the same.
The starting price of Renault ZOG 148,000 is not cheap, but such a car is not perfect in E-NCAP performance, and the domestic market is only used for micro-electric vehicles for transportation is not safe, after all, the weight and cost of the car are there, not to mention that the domestic micro-electric vehicles are not considered to be sold to Europe or the United States, so it is impossible to design the body according to the standards of E-NCAP or IIHS.
Cheap micro electric vehicles not only body design standards are not high, but also the safety configuration is also pitiful, take the side airbags for many cars do not have this configuration, and even some low-end even front airbags have been cancelled, once these cars are taken to the Zhongbao Research Institute test, the results may only be better than the old scooters.
Write at the end
Although Renault ZORE took 0 stars safety rating, but the body design is not a hard injury, perhaps until 2022 to rebrand, this car will become a 5 star rating, but this 0 star incident or let people have doubts about the safety of small electric vehicles, in fact, whether it is an electric vehicle or a fuel car, the price of more expensive size of the larger model safety is always good and the price of cheap size small car, to really care about safety that may only be full-size top luxury SUV to meet the demand.