PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

ANSA Mo­tors is hope­ful that ad­vanced AI-dri­ven safe­ty fea­tures in­tro­duced in its new Pro­ton X50 could help in­flu­ence safer dri­ving be­hav­iour on Trinidad and To­ba­go’s roads.

The com­pa­ny un­veiled the 2026 mod­el of the X50 at an event at its Charles Street show­room in Port-of-Spain on Thurs­day.

Fol­low­ing an ex­ten­sive pre­sen­ta­tion out­lin­ing the ve­hi­cle’s new fea­tures, its safe­ty tech­nol­o­gy in par­tic­u­lar drew strong in­ter­est from those in at­ten­dance.

“A lot to do with the safe­ty and a lot to do with the tech­nol­o­gy be­hind it, which is all the AI. So it ba­si­cal­ly tells you every­thing you need to do, like yes­ter­day, when I was dri­ving it, if a car comes along along­side you, it gives you a beep; if a car brakes quick­ly in front of you, it tells you that you need to brake as well. So it’s all dri­ven by AI, and it ba­si­cal­ly adapts to how you dri­ve as well,” said Marc Pon­tif­ex, ANSA Mo­tors Gen­er­al Man­ag­er for New Sales.

The Pro­ton brand has seen suc­cess in the mar­ket with its pre­vi­ous com­pact SUV mod­el since its in­tro­duc­tion in 2024, but Gen­er­al Man­ag­er for Re­gion­al Busi­ness Daryl Young said the new ve­hi­cle stands out with­in its price seg­ment due to its ad­vanced fea­tures, typ­i­cal­ly found in high­er-end mod­els.

“You would nor­mal­ly have to spend in ex­cess of $300,000 to $400,000 to have a ve­hi­cle with that type of tech in it, that type of safe­ty stan­dard. This comes in at a very, very af­ford­able price and at a rea­son­able tem­per­a­ture, it’s some­thing very, very spe­cial. Some­where around $259,000 to $269,000 will be our en­try price,” said Young.

The X50 con­tin­ues to use an in­ter­nal com­bus­tion en­gine and can be fu­elled by both Su­per and Pre­mi­um gaso­line.

The com­pa­ny said it al­so has fu­ture plans to ex­pand its elec­tric ve­hi­cle of­fer­ing.

“We cur­rent­ly car­ry an EV right now, the E MAS 7, which has cat­a­pult­ed to num­ber one in the elec­tric ve­hi­cle sta­tus cat­e­go­ry. And yes, we do have oth­er plans for some­thing down the road,” Young said, re­fer­ring to the Pro­ton EV in­tro­duced in June 2025.