How Geely Is Making Sure Its Cars Are Safe Enough for Canada

When China’s car industry really started to take off domestically in the 2000s, and the possibility of Chinese cars coming to North American roads was raised, a common concern was crash safety. And to be fair, watching some of those old crash tests revealed some rough results. Google “Brilliance BS6” today, and the first suggested result is still “crash test,” which will, of course, surface many links to its famously disastrous one-star impact from 2007 that saw the front passenger compartment horrifyingly collapse in on itself.

But that was then, and in the 20 years since, the country’s carmakers have come a long way. They’ve come so far, in fact, that thanks to a newly reduced tariff earlier this year, it looks like a bunch of Chinese cars (49,000 per year, to be precise) are about to finally reach Canadian shores.

To see how Geely — one of China’s biggest car brands and parent company of Volvo since 2010 — makes sure its vehicles are safe enough, it brought us to its massive Safety Centre in Ningbo, China, and smashed up a luxury crossover in front of our very eyes.

Biggest Safety Centre in the World

Let’s talk about this building, though. Unveiled just last December, it is, in Geely’s words, the “largest and most advanced automotive safety testing facility” in the world. It is 45,000 square metres (or about 484,000 square feet) and cost the Canadian equivalent of more than $400 million to build.

In person, the place is indeed vast, and it holds five Guinness World Records. It houses the world’s longest indoor car crash test track at 293.39 metres, the world’s biggest altitude-climate adjustable car testing wind tunnel, and the world’s biggest arbitrary-angle car crash test zone (that’s a zone that can simulate crashes from anywhere from zero to 180 degrees). It also features the most test types available in any automaker safety test lab at 27, as well as the world’s biggest automotive safety lab, period.

A huge main hall, large enough to accommodate a handful of soccer fields, was clearly set up for a wide variety of crash-test types. Behind a huge glass wall was a theatre area for observation, and another large section housed a contraption that let Geely simulate different types of precipitation.

There was a grey Zeekr 007 GT wagon on display — its front end was thoroughly destroyed to a degree where you knew the impact must have been devastating, yet the passenger compartment was structurally intact. A big lit-up sign read “Real life is more complex than standardized testing,” which was a reassuringly pragmatic sentiment and, as a child of Chinese immigrants, something every Chinese immigrant parent should try taking to heart one of these days.

Journalists were restricted from taking photos for this part of the tour, so you’ll just have to trust me on this, but down a hallway were at least a dozen smaller rooms, all dedicated to the testing and production of collision-critical car components, crash test dummies of all different shapes and sizes, semi-autonomous driving hardware and software, and even cybersecurity controllers and programs.

They Did It Live

Owning a huge and expensive kitchen does not make you a good chef, though, and to demonstrate the fruits of all of this labour and real estate, Geely brought out a Zeekr 7X luxury crossover for a live crash test.

With about 200 phone cameras pointed at it with bated breath, a rig known as a moving deformable barrier slammed into the back of the 7X at 84 km/h. Even sitting about 200 metres away, the sound on impact was alarming, and after crews made sure nothing would become a fire hazard, we got up close to the aftermath.

The rear end was thoroughly smashed in, all the doors had popped open at least a little bit, there was quite a bit of debris, and a pool of pink fluid had appeared beneath the impact area. But crucially, the passenger compartment was intact, the barrier had not intruded into any area where humans would be sitting, and any occupants would very likely survive.

Ergo, it isn’t just PR-sanctioned, luxury SUV crash tests where Geely vehicles do well. Of the company’s cars already being sold in Europe and subject to Euro NCAP testing, all hold five-star ratings from the organization. These include the Toyota RAV4-sized Geely EX5 EV and Starray EM-i PHEV, as well as luxury arm Zeekr’s subcompact X and compact 7X crossovers, as well as the 001 wagon. (China, by the way, loves a good wagon, a sentiment we hope can also be transplanted to Canada.)

Standard Setter

In fact, not only did the Zeekr X win Euro NCAP’s Best in Class Awards for both Small SUVs and Pure Electric Vehicles, but it’s being used by both Euro NCAP and its Australian equivalent to develop updated safety standards for 2029 with a focus on improving advanced driver assistance tech and minimizing false-positive autonomous braking. Looking up the crash test videos for the car, by the way, explains why it’s held in such high regard.

All of that in mind, not all Chinese cars are created equal, just like how not all German cars are created equal, not all Japanese cars are created equal, and not all American cars are created equal. What’s more, crash safety optics is just one of the numerous challenges Chinese brands will face when coming to Canada.

But given how seriously Geely takes safety, and its standing with the world’s other governing bodies, it’s safe to say that the blanket “Chinese-made deathtrap” stereotype is a thing of the past.