• Model 3 achieves the lowest probability of injury of any vehicle ever tested
    11 replies, posted
https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/blog/m3-nhtsa-blog-09272018.jpg Based on the advanced architecture of Model S and Model X, which were previously found by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to have the lowest and second lowest probabilities of injury of all cars ever tested, we engineered Model 3 to be the safest car ever built. Now, not only has Model 3 achieved a perfect 5-star safety rating in every category and sub-category, but NHTSA’s tests also show that it has the lowest probability of injury of all cars the safety agency has ever tested. NHTSA tested Model 3 Long Range Rear-Wheel Drive as part of its New Car Assessment Program, a series of crash tests used to calculate the likelihood of serious bodily injury for front, side and rollover crashes. The agency’s data shows that vehicle occupants are less likely to get seriously hurt in these types of crashes when in a Model 3 than in any other car. NHTSA’s previous tests of Model S and Model X still hold the record for the second and third lowest probabilities of injury, making Tesla vehicles the best ever rated by NHTSA. We expect similar results for other Model 3 variants, including our dual-motor vehicles, when they are rated. https://www.tesla.com/blog/model-3-lowest-probability-injury-any-vehicle-ever-tested-nhtsa
While I don't think it will be the case, this does seem a little bit like they are engineering it for the test rather than overal safety. Worst case is, it's still a lot safer even if the tests aren't good, which AFAIK they actually are, so everyone still wins.
Tesla have made all this look so easy. They have really put the entire car industry to shame with the advances they have made in the short time they have been properly operational.
I guess not delivering vehicles to customers is a good way to reduce probability of injury.
I don't know what you are talking about? Tesla delivered double the amount of cars they delivered in Q2...so people are definitely getting the cars they ordered.
I'm sure it was just a joke.
After only a few years! Tbh, I've yet to see a single Model 3 here, and I know that people around here are very into Teslas. Idk when they'll start shipping to Norway, but I suspect many will have waited like 3 years before they get theirs.
When your car is built like a tank to avoid the battery from going nuclear in an emergency it sure gives it a pretty good rating. Which is a good thing of course.
The low center of mass the battery pack provides is also very useful from a safety point of view, as it turns out.
Indeed. I saw this video and was shocked. Please mute the audio though because the music is obnoxious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L24xzJkCGdk
They're not shipping overseas orders yet. Seen a lot in my part of the US.
So this is mostly a non-concern, as someone who does crash simulation I can say it's very difficult to cut corners and 'just pass the test' while not making the car safe. I can think of one example I've seen where a company removed a very forward cross brace in the floor structure which didn't show a lot of benefit due to them only doing 5th & 50th percentile side pole tests. (This is basically mashing the side of the car into a steel pole in line the head of a dummy, 5th being a small woman in the most forward seat position, 50th being a man sized in the middle position). If you moved the pole more forward outside of the standard side pole tests, you'd crumple up the front because that cross member was removed. Different crash tests are made in order to basically gauge your performance against the most obvious and common crash occurrences as Resonant says below. You can go above and beyond, as some OEMs do, but overall in order to get a good rating you generally have to have a good design. In this day and age where I can shoot out a suite of simulated crash tests on Monday, and have designed solutions to improve them by Friday we still have cars that perform relatively badly in testing. These are the manufacturers who'd benefit most from 'gaming' the system, yet they don't because they really can't without making a reasonable design in the first place. So Tesla's fundamental car architecture allows them so much more flexibility compared to an ICE vehicle, once we start getting other car OEMs going full force with real non-gimmicky electrics they'll start getting similiar benefits. From a technical perspective just in a simplistic manner looking at front, side and rear crash tests I can give ya'll a rough breakdown of why it's easier to make the car better. Front - so the main different here is the lack of heavy ass engine up front, what usually happens in crash is that the engine/transmission ends up slamming into the cabin, this is usually dealt with using the IP beam (big beam behind the dashboard) and smarter OEMs try and deflect the engine downwards under the tunnel in order to avoid the cabin. No engine means the front crash structure is free to eat up all that energy, and the front intrusion levels will be excellent as a result. Side - as others in the thread have said, the big stiff battery structure helps a ton, usually in most modern designs if you ever looked at the sill beam it's fucking bulky, but what usually happens it snaps or bends in, the added big bulky battery means it's less inclined to do that, and as a result intrusion is much lower. Rear - So the main hard test on the rear is basically to check if your fuel tank gets busted up during a high speed rear impact, Tesla obviously has no rear fuel tank, so they can put in some neat rear structure to help mitigate any issues there. So I wrote more on this than I planned, but in summary electric designs make it easier to get good test score, assuming you rub more than two brain cells together when it comes to exploiting the benefits of the architecture.
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