Articles by Tom White

Mitsubishi was taken aback this year by the popularity of its oldest product, the outgoing previous-generation ASX.

This is Australia’s most affordable plug-in hybrid vehicle. It’s the Chery Tiggo 7 ‘Super Hybrid’ and you can have one for just $39,990 drive-away at the time we put this review together.

ANCAP Chief Executive Officer Carla Hoorweg explained how the safety body doesn’t require many of the more frustrating elements of modern safety suites plaguing some new cars.Hoorweg said ANCAP doesn’t actually require beeping or overbearing assistive input for specific features like lane departure warning, traffic sign recognition, or driver attention alert, which are all often derided as the source of annoying sounds or interventions.“It’s certainly something we take the opportunity to correct. It is something that is thrown up from time to time by a small number of people in the industry as a way of avoiding some of the difficult and complex decisions and R&D processes that manufacturers have to go through.”She said the specifics of Australian road conditions can mean some safety suites tuned overseas in Europe or China for example, may not as easily transfer across, despite them still technically qualifying the vehicle for a maximum five-star score under ANCAP’s current regime.“Some people might not realise that it isn’t actually a requirement, we’re not requiring this. When we’re talking to manufacturers and consumers a lot of what we’re talking about is ensuring these systems are well designed for Australian and New Zealand conditions - and they’ve done that real-world driving and R&D in-country and not just said ‘oh that works in the test lab, it’ll be fine’.”She added the new ratings system, which will be introduced from 2026, will have specific pillars the safety body will be able to use to target things like overbearing safety aids and the lack of tactile functions in cars going forward.“From 2026 there will be elements of that - driver distraction is a big focus - you’ve seen some of the comments around buttons vs touchscreens, whether that makes it into the 2026 standards remains to be seen, but that area as a focus area of the protocols is very live and there’s a lot of work going on around human machine interface and driver distraction," she said.“If it doesn’t come in 2026,  it will come at some point. We’ll be looking at systems which are more distracting than beneficial and we’ll be trying to move manufacturers more towards helpful systems.“If they’re not thinking about it already, they should be.“This is all about driver assistance systems rather than systems that are distracting or annoying or worse,” said Hoorweg.The new ‘Safe Driving’ category, which focuses on technology and the driving experience, will be targeting such systems. More research is needed to see the actual impact overbearing beeping and steering assists as well as frustrating touchscreen menus actually had on driver performance and the rates of actual crashes.“If we don’t see some improvement, these are the levers we have to pull.”“There is a lot of research going on at the moment to try and quantify that. Are we seeing crashes because people are distracted, or are people just annoyed by it and it’s not actually causing crashes. Is it turning up in the data and if it is in these scenarios how do we target that?”She said research in this area is conducted by working groups which provide academic studies and research papers to safety bodies around the world.“Globally it’s going on, but it’s also filtering up through the EuroNCAP and ANCAP working group.”“Manufacturers are involved in those working groups, so manufacturers will know where the protocols are going. The conversation now is about 2029 protocols - 2026 we need to finish those off, but the direction is there, so now it’s the work on 2029 - the manufacturers involved in that know where it’s going and what’s being looked at and the more concrete steps around kinds of controls.”She added that just because a safety system was annoying, doesn’t mean the safety body will target it, and it will only be regulated if it has a measurable impact on resulting collisions.ANCAP’s new safety regime debuting in January 2026 overhauls the system into a new set of pillars dubbed ‘the stages of safety’ which are said to be “a much more logical approach for the layperson.”The new categories are Safe Driving, Crash Avoidance, Crash Protection, and Post Crash, replacing Adult Occupant Protection, Child Occupant Protection, Vulnerable Road User Protection, and Safety Assist.The pillars give ANCAP a framework by which to score cars, and also a method by which to automatically deduct stars where some key elements of each pillar are not met.

The Exceed sits second from the top of the Outlander range and is available only as a five-seater in all-wheel drive.It is priced from $55,140 before on-roads and features all of the equipment from the lower grade Aspire, plus 'high-grade leather-appointed' seats and interior trim, heating, ventilation and power adjust for the front two positions, memory options for the driver's seat, a digital rear-vision mirror, a hands-free power tailgate, an upgrade to tri-zone climate adding a third climate zone for the second row, aluminium pedals, a panoramic opening sunroof, built-in sunshades for the rear windows, and a full-size alloy spare.It scores the full safety suite consisting of the standard auto emergency braking (front and rear), lane keep assist with departure warning, blind spot monitoring with rear cross-traffic alert, driver attention alert, traffic sign recognition, adaptive cruise control with traffic jam assist, and adaptive high beams.All combustion Outlander grades are powered by the same 2.5-litre four-cylinder petrol engine (135kW/244Nm) mated to a continuously variable automatic transmission (CVT). Importantly for the 2025 update, all Outlander grades now score an Australian-developed ride and handling tune.Fuel consumption is rated at 8.1L/100km. All combustion Outlanders can use 91RON petrol.Boot capacity is 485 litres in all five-seat combustion-powered Outlanders, and the spare resides under the floor.

The angry-looking Cupra Tavascan is more like a cream puff in the daily commute.

The Aspire is the third variant in the Mitsubishi Outlander range, and serves as the top-spec seven-seat version, as the halo Exceed grade is only available in five-seat form.

Chery locks in its last hybrid SUV model before the end of 2026 as it blitzes as many categories as possible in top-10 race.

The LS is the mid-grade Outlander, and the most affordable version available with seven seats.

The Outlander ES is the entry point to the mid-size SUV's range.

Chery's premium play unfolds with the Omoda 9 plug-in hybrid large SUV.