KGM Musso EV Missing 2 Airbags It Was Sold With

The safety kit you were promised may not be in the car

Buying a new ute is supposed to remove doubt, not add it. You read the brochure, you trust the spec sheet, and you sign. The KGM Musso EV has just shown Australian buyers why that trust needs checking.

Independent safety authority ANCAP has warned that the electric ute was advertised with eight airbags, but the vehicles delivered here only have six. The two that are missing are not minor extras. They are the front centre airbag and the driver knee airbag.

This is not a rumour or a spy shot. It is a formal consumer alert from the body that crash tests cars for the Australian market. If you own a Musso EV or you are about to buy one, it changes what you thought you were getting.

What ANCAP actually found

ANCAP bought its own Musso EV utes and crash tested them, rather than accepting vehicles supplied by the brand. During a destructive side impact test, the expected centre airbag never deployed.

When inspectors pulled the car apart afterwards, the centre airbag simply was not there. A closer review confirmed the driver knee airbag was missing too. The advertised eight had quietly become six.

KGM had listed both airbags in the Musso EV brochure and on its Australian website. The airbags appeared in the marketing, but not in the metal. By the end of July 2026 the company had amended its materials to show six.

Around 306 utes were already on the road

This was not caught before the first delivery. It surfaced after roughly 306 Musso EVs had already been sold in Australia, going by the VFACTS registration figures ANCAP cited.

That means hundreds of owners paid for a vehicle described one way and received another. The Musso EV reached showrooms late in 2025, with sales starting in December, so many of these buyers have owned the ute for the better part of a year.

KGM has called it an error in its published product information. Whatever the label, the practical result is the same. People bought a safety story that did not fully match the car.

The two missing airbags do real work

It would be easy to shrug this off as two airbags out of eight. Crash engineers do not see it that way, and neither should buyers.

A centre airbag sits on the inner edge of the driver seat and inflates between the two front occupants. In a side impact it stops the driver and passenger from striking each other, which is a genuine cause of head injuries.

A driver knee airbag sits low, under the steering column. It controls how the driver's body moves in a frontal crash and reduces the load on the legs and lower spine. ANCAP said the absence of both airbags may affect occupant safety in front and side impact crashes.

How does a car lose two airbags on paper?

KGM has framed this as an unintentional administrative error and says it is reviewing how it happened. In plain terms, the Australian marketing described a specification the delivered cars did not match.

That kind of slip is easy to make and hard to excuse. Local specifications often differ from the home market, and someone has to check that the brochure matches the build sheet for cars bound for Australia.

When that check fails, the buyer becomes the last line of defence. That is an uncomfortable place to be when the subject is airbags rather than paint colours.

Compliant does not mean as advertised

KGM has pointed out that the Musso EV still meets Vehicle Type Approval, the legal standard a car must clear to be sold here. That is true, and it matters, but it is not the whole story.

Type approval is a legal minimum. It does not promise you every feature the brochure listed. A car can be perfectly legal to sell and still be missing kit you were told it had.

That gap is exactly where buyers get caught. The rules protect a baseline. They do not police whether the marketing matched the build, which is where doing your own homework earns its keep.

The airbags cannot be added to cars already sold

Here is the part that stings for existing owners. KGM has confirmed the centre and driver knee airbags cannot be retrofitted to the model year 2026 Musso EVs already on the road.

There is no dealer visit that fixes this. The cars were physically built in the six airbag configuration, and that is how they stay. The company says it is working with its Korean head office on future versions.

For now, KGM says it is finalising a customer communication and redress plan and will contact affected owners directly. What redress actually means, in dollars or otherwise, has not been spelled out.

If you own a Musso EV, here is what to do now

First, do not panic, but do act. Contact KGM Australia or your local KGM dealer and ask in writing to confirm exactly how many airbags your specific vehicle has.

Second, keep every piece of the original advertising. The brochure, the website spec sheet, the emails from the dealer. If the car was sold to you as an eight airbag vehicle, that paperwork is your evidence.

Third, ask directly about compensation or redress and get the answer in writing. KGM has said dealers should refer these requests back to head office, so push for a documented response rather than a verbal maybe.

Six airbags is not the same as unsafe

It is worth keeping perspective. Six airbags is still a reasonable count, and plenty of well regarded vehicles on sale today carry six. The problem is not that six is dangerous on its own.

The problem is that buyers were told eight and given six. Safety decisions get made on the numbers in front of you, and a family may have chosen this ute over a rival precisely because of the airbag count.

Being denied the ability to make an informed choice is the real harm here. The two missing airbags also target specific, well understood injury risks that some six airbag layouts leave uncovered.

If you are shopping, verify before you sign

The Musso EV is not a bad ute on paper. It carries an 80.6kWh battery, offers up to 420km of range in the rear drive version and around 380km in all wheel drive, and it launched from about $60,000.

But this episode is a reminder that a spec sheet is a claim, not a guarantee. Before you commit to any new vehicle, ask the dealer to confirm the safety equipment on the exact car you are buying, in writing.

This is the same discipline that saves buyers money on price. At Carseekers the whole point is helping Australians see past the sales pitch to what a car actually is and what it should really cost. Verifying safety kit is the same instinct applied to the spec sheet.

Do not let finance lock you in before the facts

There is a money angle here too. Many buyers arrange dealer finance in the same sitting they sign for the car, often before they have checked a single independent source.

That is the worst moment to commit. Once the loan is drawn and the car is delivered, unwinding the deal over a spec dispute is far harder than pausing to verify first.

It pays to sort your finance separately and calmly. Comparing lenders through Loanseekers, which weighs more than 70 lenders, keeps you from being rushed into a dealer loan before you have confirmed the car is what you were told. Confirm the vehicle, then confirm the finance.

The bigger lesson for buyers of newer brands

KGM is the brand formerly known as SsangYong, and it sits among a wave of value focused names competing hard on price and features. The pitch is more kit for less money, and often it holds up.

But newer and fast moving brands can also have thinner local quality control on the fine detail. A specification that is right in Korea can be wrong on the Australian order sheet, as the eight airbag claim shows. The Korean market Musso EV is still listed with eight.

None of this means avoid the challengers. It means treat every headline feature as something to confirm, not assume, no matter how new or established the badge is.

What a weak crash rating could mean for resale

The Musso EV does not yet carry an ANCAP rating, and this test is how it earns one. If the missing airbags drag the result down, that has consequences beyond safety.

Fleets and many private buyers filter on ANCAP stars. A low score, or a well publicised safety flag, can soften resale demand and hurt what your ute is worth in three or four years.

We have seen brands respond before. MG resubmitted its MG 5 after a poor initial result and lifted it to three stars, so KGM may yet update and retest a revised Musso EV. That would help future buyers more than current owners.

A quick checklist before you buy any new ute

Ask for the airbag count and safety features in writing for the exact build you are buying, not the range brochure. Get it on the order form or in an email you can keep.

Check whether the model has a current ANCAP rating and from which year, since older ratings can expire and no longer reflect the car in front of you. Ask what the warranty covers and for how long.

Finally, separate the car decision from the finance decision. Confirm the vehicle first, then compare your loan options with a clear head rather than signing whatever the dealer desk slides across.

The bottom line

The KGM Musso EV story is not really about one ute. It is about the gap between what a brochure promises and what rolls off the truck, and who is left to check it.

ANCAP did the checking this time, and only because it bought and crashed the cars itself. Buyers cannot run crash tests, but they can demand written confirmation of the exact specification before they hand over a deposit.

Trust the badge less and the paperwork more. Confirm the car, confirm the finance, and never assume the spec sheet is the same as the vehicle in the driveway.