The loss of four of its stars is primarily due to this refreshed X90 losing a lot of active safety features.
While Proton may have hoped that the new lower entry price of its refreshed Proton X90 would make the large SUV a more compelling option for families, this welcome development has since however been overshadowed by a far less positive one. Such is as ASEAN NCAP has recently downgraded this updated SUV’s safety rating from five stars to just one, following the removal of several key advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS).
Now for some context, when the X90 first launched in 2023, it secured a five-star rating with a strong overall score of 83.79 points across four assessment categories: Adult Occupant Protection, Child Occupant Protection, Safety Assist and Motorcyclist Safety. That result was underpinned by a comprehensive safety suite that included Autonomous Emergency Braking, Forward Collision Warning, Lane Departure Warning, Lane Keep Assist, Rear Cross Traffic Alert and Blind Spot Monitoring.
The 2026 facelift, however, no longer offers any of those features across its three new variants. And while the update brings with it the aforementioned welcome reduction in entry price, the removal of the ADAS suite has nevertheless also slashed most of its stars in ASEAN NCAP’s safety assessment.
Under the ASEAN NCAP 2021–2025 protocol, a vehicle’s overall star rating is capped at the level of its lowest-performing category. And with the aforementioned systems removed, the X90’s Safety Assist score has fallen to a four-star equivalent level. Though more crucially, its Motorcyclist Safety rating has dropped all the way to one star, which ultimately dragged the SUV’s overall result down with it.
ASEAN NCAP technical leader Yahaya Ahmad highlighted Blind Spot Detection as a particularly critical factor in the Motorcyclist Safety category, given the high density of motorcycles sharing roads across Southeast Asia. The absence of this feature, alongside other supporting technologies, was thus central to the sharp drop in that assessment area.
Commenting on the decision, Siti Zaharah Ishak, director-general of the Malaysian Institute of Road Safety Research (MIROS), said: “We deeply regret Proton’s decision to remove life-saving ADAS technologies from the new facelift model. To protect consumers and maintain the integrity of safety standards, we have no choice but to revoke the 2023 five-star rating.”
It has to also be added here that the original five-star result remains valid for X90 units produced between 2023 and 2025, which retained the full ADAS package required under the current testing protocol.
Of course, this is hardly ideal for Proton to have been so skint with the safety kit, not least because the X90 is primarily intended to serve as a family hauler. Though it would be remissed not to mention that the vehicle’s fundamental crash safety has not actually changed, as the loss of four stars is largely the result of how the current assessment criteria are structured.
So to put it bluntly then, you will still be very safe when you cream into something in your blind spot. Joking aside, this does beg the genuine question of whether it was really worth removing all those safety features for the sake of saving a few bucks?
