Why New Cars Keep FAILING the Moose Test

this is the moose test and strangely many new cars are failing it either rolling up on two wheels spinning under steering straight on or rolling over completely it's a test that was made famous by technique and vard a swedish motoring magazine and they've put hundreds of cars through the test to ensure that their handling is good enough to be safe on the road now you would have thought that the grip and handling of cars was getting better not worse so i've done some digging to find out exactly what's going on the moose test measures a car's cornering ability and resistance to rolling over you basically weave through a set of cones that replicate swerving to avoid something in the road like a moose giving the test its name and obviously this is common in sweden where the test was invented this may seem a little irrelevant for those of us who aren't in countries that have moose roaming around however it's similar to a pedestrian stepping out into the road or a car driving out from a blind junction the test is done on a dry surface while having the car fully loaded up with people and luggage definitely putting the car in the worst case scenario and in terms of cornering the test is really aggressive a lot of the cars complete the test around 40 to 50 miles an hour and while this doesn't sound like a lot speaking from experience the turns are extremely tight you have to wind on a lot of steering angle then unwind it before doing the same in the opposite direction a scenario that doesn't happen too much on the road but it certainly can the rapid change of direction can be enough to unsettle cars pushing them over their limits with tight turns and a heavy load the cars run several tests gradually increasing the speed until they fail the test to pass you have to complete the run at 43 miles an hour or over without hitting cones spinning out or rolling over the test became world famous when the mercedes a-class not only failed the test but failed in dramatic style the a-class had a tall body combined with a short wheelbase design which is great for passenger space but makes the centre of gravity really high meaning that the car is easier to roll over when cornering hard and the car's center of gravity matters because it creates a lever effect the higher the centre of gravity the longer the lever and the easier it is for the car to fall over mercedes initially denied the issue but eventually admitted the car had a huge problem and recalled all of the a-classes that had been sold and the recall didn't come cheaply costing mercedes an insane 250 million dollars however more recently lots of well-known cars have been failing the test too the 2016 toyota hilux failed the test when it nearly rolled running the test at the required 43 miles an hour and of course the hilux is an off-road focus pickup truck so you may say that it shouldn't be subject to the same sort of test and you're kind of right but there is a need to test the cornering ability of all the cars on the road as any one of them may have to avoid a pedestrian stepping out into the street but the hilux has several disadvantages in this test it can carry a lot more load than the other cars so it's incredibly heavy during the test and as it's built for off-road it has a tall ride height which really doesn't help when cornering quickly and in addition its suspension is very soft to aid traction in the mud if you were to design a car that wasn't good for the moose test this may well be it the actual problem with the hilux was that the front of the car had too much grip and the rear didn't have enough a solution to this could have been adding a stiffer anti-roll bar to the rear however this would have impacted the off-road ability of the truck and in general suvs struggle with this test you can check out technique and vard's channel which i've linked in the description to see loads of cars failing in this way and this was also the case with the toyota rav4 which failed in 2020 and then again in 2021 with the revised version of the car the same happened to the 2011 jeep grand cherokee only this one actually ripped the tires off the rims watch here then the porsche mccann had a different issue with the moose test it used a system that engaged the brakes on selected wheels to prevent rollovers but this only created understeer meaning that the porsche failed the test anyway two of the most recent failures are for a different reason the volkswagen passat gte and the skoda superb are both cars that are hybrid versions on a combustion engine platform so basically they have stuck a large battery in the boot of a car that wasn't designed to have a battery in the boot both cars failed the test when the rear kept losing grip and meaning the 43 miles an hour couldn't be reached before the class spun out and it's thought this is down to the batteries being fitted in the rear of the car making the handling tricky under cornering this means that as the car turns in the front grips and rotates the car with the weight in the rear pushing the car into a spin think of a big pendulum and perhaps the most surprising is the bmw m3 competition a car that is made to be great on the track and the problem here was that the car rotated perfectly but the rear would slide around this really does show that cars with brilliant handling aren't necessarily great for the moose test and on this occasion i think a professional driver would have been able to do better here but there you go these failures do bring a lot of questions about the legitimacy of the tests and it certainly has its critics however most of the criticism is about the test not being carried out by a motoring testing agency or the results being taken to mean more than they do my main criticism is that it's very unnatural to be cornering like this without being on the brakes the car is just rolling in the moose test the braking effect would actually place more weight on the front of the car and can aid grip reducing the understeer that you see in a lot of the heavier cars however it is a test that pushes cars to their limits and whilst it shouldn't be taken as the be-all and end-all it does give an indication of a car's ability also there have been a number of examples of manufacturers making changes to their cars as a direct result of fading this test so clearly they think there is something to it there are some cars that you might not expect that really excel the first being the tesla model x an suv that in principle is similar to the cars that we mentioned earlier however the model x has placed its way in the right place in the floor and centered in the middle this means that despite it being much heavier than some of its combustion engine competitors it can complete the test at up to 45 miles an hour however best of all is the car that has held the record for over 20 years now you would have thought this is a light nimble sports car maybe a lotus or a porsche but the thing is that supercars really don't perform that well in these tests as they're tuned for perfect balance in longer corners the winner is actually the mighty citroen zantia a very normal family saloon from 1999 and it achieved an incredible speed of 52.8 miles an hour firstly this car had a computer-controlled active suspension system which was said to offer roll-free f1 style cornering like the famous williams fw14b a car that used hydraulic suspension that could adapt to every corner on a circuit and where normal suspension would overload the outside wheels and lift the inside wheels the citroen could manage the load on each tyre improving overall corner and grip the zantia is capable of almost instantaneously adjusting the ride height of the car with its variable shock absorbers and can do it 400 times a second this means the mighty zantia can change from a soft to a firm suspension in less than half a second and all this means that the car actually leans into the corners and control the weight transfer perfectly meaning it's never been beaten we tested braking with and without abs just to see what the difference in performance was and the results were actually very surprising you can check out that video here thanks for watching if you haven't already please subscribe to the driven channel and i'll see you in the next video

Channel: OVERDRIVE

Views: 22,264,110

Keywords: driven, driver61, scott mansell, brake test, moose test, Engineering, Moose Test, funny, Mercedes A Class, Toyota, Toyota Hilux, Hilux, RAV4, RAV 4, Tesla Model X, Audi, BMW, Mercedes, Tesla, Ford, Cars, Automotive, Jeep, Roll, Flip, Crash, evasive maneuver, elk test, avoidance maneuver, elk test fail compilation, elk test car, rav4 elk test, worst elk test, moose test fail compilation, moose test mercedes, moose test jeep, moose test passed cars, moose test flip, moose test fail

Id: qIN8CyhYREM

Length: 8min 6sec (486 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 17 2021