Tesla Model S Fails To Get Top IIHS Crash Rating (usatoday.com)

mrspoonsi writes: Shares in Tesla have plummeted more than 13 percent this week after lower than expected deliveries and the Model S only attaining an acceptable result in recent crash tests. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety states: "Tesla made changes to the safety belt in vehicles built after January with the intent of reducing the dummy's forward movement. However, when IIHS tested the modified Model S, the same problem occurred, and the rating didn't change. Although the two tested vehicles had identical structure, the second test resulted in greater intrusion into the driver's space because the left front wheel movement wasn't consistent. Maximum intrusion increased from less than 2 inches to 11 inches in the lower part and to 5 inches at the instrument panel in the second test. The first test resulted in a good rating for structural integrity, while the second test resulted in an acceptable structural rating. The two tests' structural ratings were combined, resulting in acceptable structure and an acceptable rating overall for the Model S." A Tesla spokesperson responded to the IIHS's crash rating in a statement to Forbes: "IIHS and dozens of other private industry groups around the world have methods and motivations that suit their own subjective purposes."

Comments

Motivation

[Anonymous Coward]

""IIHS and dozens of other private industry groups around the world have methods and motivations that suit their own subjective purposes."

yep driver and passenger safety, obviously Telsa's motivations differ significantly.

Re:Motivation

[Tailhook]

Telsa has a history of squabbling with safety testing regimes

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/11/21/1959244/nhtsa-tells-tesla-to-stop-exaggerating-model-s-safety-rating

Re:Motivation

[Rei]

Forbes truncated their quote (and worse, added in a period to make it look like that ended a sentence). The actual quote is:

Tesla's Model S received the highest rating in IIHS's crash testing in every category except for one, the small overlap front crash test, where it received the second highest rating available. While IIHS and dozens of other private industry groups around the world have methods and motivations that suit their own subjective purposes, the most objective and accurate independent testing of vehicle safety is currently done by the U.S. government, which found Model S and Model X to be the two cars with the lowest probability of injury of any cars that it has ever tested, making them the safest cars in history.

The quote appears deliberately truncated to try to make it look like Tesla is badmouthing the IIHS, when they're very clearly just saying that they think the NHTSA testing is more meaningful. While that's a debatable point (I see no realistic reason to favour one over the other), Forbes' truncation is pretty questionable. Of course, what do you expect from an opinion piece that in its second sentence all but calls Tesla a cult?

The reality is that the failed test ("small overlap") is a new test developed in 2012, after the Model S design was already completed; it was never designed to the test, only adapted to try to meet it (apparently unsuccessfully thusfar). To be fair to Tesla, this same issue has hit numerous other manufacturers; only three vehicles at present pass get the best rating in it (two of them new designs from 2017) - and Tesla did manage the second best rating. On the other hand, Tesla wants to build part of its reputation on being a leader in safety, and the small overlap crash test, while new, is meaningful. It's the equivalent of sideswiping a utility pole or similar - a very real type of crash that has previously not been well represented in existing crash tests. Tesla needs to get this right next year.

Re:Motivation

[Solandri]

The NHTSA tests were made by a bunch of people sitting in an office thinking up what might be a good way to simulate vehicle crashes to test their safety.

The IIHS tests are made by the folks who have to pay out money for insurance claims, and are designed to weed out failure modes they are seeing in actual crashes which led them to pay out more than they were expecting. They made the driver's side overlap tests specifically because they saw it as a weakness with the NHTSA tests. The NHTSA test only covers impacts directly from the front and the side. Yet they were seeing a lot of claims from impacts where cars didn't hit head-on and the intrusion thus bypassed most or all the crash-resistance designed to satisfy the NHTSA test.

• Driver drifts slightly over the double yellow line and hits a car in the oncoming lane.
• Driver veers off the road and hits something (concrete, building, etc) at an angle driver's side first.

Those are the scenarios that the IIHS test is trying to replicate. Passing the "small" version of the overlap test successfully is important because if the car can't, it may actually be better for the driver to let a greater portion of the car's front hit the oncoming vehicle/obstacle, rather than to try to avoid it and only receive a glancing blow. As the size of the impact area shrinks, the stresses on the section receiving the impact increases because there's less material absorbing the same crash energy. So the crash-resistance should be concentrated mostly along the sides, tapering off as you move inwards (perhaps increasing again towards the center). That is what this test is encouraging car designers to do. A car could be designed to let its left or right side completely shear off in a collision which misses the center of the front bumper, and still be completely NHTSA-compliant.

Re:Motivation

[gumbi west]

If the small overlap test was invented in 2012, how did the Volvo s80 pass it in 2007? http://www.iihs.org/iihs/ratin... click on "other model years" to see the test results through time.

Re:Motivation

[Anonymous Coward]

That's easy to explain based on the source you cite:
For Small overlap front: "Tested vehicle 2014 Volvo S80 3.2 4-door" ( http://www.iihs.org/iihs/ratings/vehicle/v/volvo/s80-4-door-sedan/2007 )
I guess they apply the same result to all preceding years during which the model was not altered.

Re:Motivation

[bluefoxlucid]

Yeah this is bad journalism. Can we get the whole quote added to the summary?

Re:Motivation

[gumbi west]

I'll buy that.

An "Acceptable" safety rating?

[nuckfuts]

This is unacceptable!

Re:Beginning of the end?

[Rei]

Tesla goes bankrupt

Oh, are we restarting the old TTAC "Tesla Death Watch" feature, with its regular columns predicting the imminent death of Tesla back in the early Roadster days?

I always get a grin when I thumb through that, now that Tesla is worth as much as a major automaker and just about to start rolling out an EV (Model 3) in production numbers and with a performance/price point widely mocked as impossible just a few years ago... back when they were just starting to roll out an EV (Model S) in production numbers and with a performance/price point widely mocked as impossible a few years before that.... back when they were just starting to roll out an EV (Roadster) in production numbers and with a performance/price point widely mocked as impossible a few years before that....

Kennedys in the Enquirer

[rmdingler]

Does anyone wonder why every negative story involving the Tesla or Elon Musk receives coverage entirely out of balance with the rest of the Corporate news.

You will very seldom see a story lead with, "Chevrolet driver involved in accident due to mechanical failure!"

Musk's Dog caught in neighbor's garbage

Re:Kennedys in the Enquirer

[Luthair]

Its not just negative stories, the Silicon Valley press fall over themselves to be first in line to write the blow job pieces.

Re:Kennedys in the Enquirer

[rmdingler]

Thanks bro, you're the best.

Re:Kennedys in the Enquirer

[Mr D from 63]

Does anyone wonder why every negative story involving the Tesla or Elon Musk receives coverage entirely out of balance with the rest of the Corporate news.

You will very seldom see a story lead with, "Chevrolet driver involved in accident due to mechanical failure!"

Musk's Dog caught in neighbor's garbage

Musk hypes everything up, he loves attention and so he gets attention in return. Plus, Tesla is a growth company with a lot of legitimate questions regarding sustainability (see link below), so the investment analysts are going to talk about it a lot. There are reports on other car companies, but their are fewer question marks with established companies, and those articles don't get posted on slashdot.

I would not invest in Tesla right now. I've never seen such shorting on such a large company, and from my experience the shorts are right a lot more often than wrong.

https://seekingalpha.com/artic...

Re:Kennedys in the Enquirer

[rmdingler]

Musk hypes everything up, he loves attention and so he gets attention in return. Plus, Tesla is a growth company with a lot of legitimate questions regarding sustainability (see link below), so the investment analysts are going to talk about it a lot. There are reports on other car companies, but their are fewer question marks with established companies, and those articles don't get posted on slashdot.

Ever drive by those car lots that have the most flamboyant, garish, ubiquitous television advertisements? They are always full of people kicking tires.

There may be Space entrepreneurs strapped for cash and investors, but it ain't the South African.

Re:Kennedys in the Enquirer

[bluefoxlucid]

Because it's novel, thus unknown, and you can get people to see you as a source of security by making them feel threatened by something else. They see that you saved them with knowledge, and come back to you.

Unethical journalism to construct stories of villainy from big organizations people trust is a staple of ProPublica. They've repeatedly released American Red Cross Lessons Learned documentation--stuff that says what went wrong, what went right, what they'd do different if they did it again, why it went wrong, and what needs more review--with headlines and fanciful stories claiming that ARC is ineffective and is trying to cover up and ignore the horrendous mismanagement of their relief efforts.

In case you missed it: the existence of LL documentation demonstrates the exact opposite.

ProPublica also attacked Amazon's search because it shows a lower price+shipping for an Amazon product based on the free shipping Amazon offers (on orders over $25), which they demonstrated by tacking on the cost of expedited shipping to Amazon-sourced products. So you can get it for $23 and free shipping from Amazon, or $21 + $3.99 shipping from BuyOurBooks; ProPublica says it's more-expensive from Amazon because non-Super-Saver-Shipping orders have to pay $23+$6.21, and thus concludes Amazon should have ranked the other option as the top, cheapest option, and is only putting their products first to scam you into sending them your money.

Who doesn't have an entire backlog of stuff they want to buy at some point? I just tack something else I didn't need right away onto my order to pad it out.

When you sit down and weed these things out, you start noticing that a deep inspection makes it look like a whole lot of yelling about nothing. The presented facts are organized to tell an amazing falsehood, and suggestions are made to do things "better" which would be objectively-worse. The point is most people don't sit down and debunk the story; they apply their own political bias and accept or reject it. If they don't yet have a strong bias, then they let you spoon feed your opinion to them.

Now you have an audience who swallowed your bullshit about how someone they trusted has betrayed them. You are their savior. They come back to beg you for more information, to tell them more of the wisdom they have missed in their vulgar, miserable, wretched lives. They give you ad revenue.

Of course we push hundreds of attack pieces against anything new and trendy. It's new and trendy, and most people are either against change or indifferent; we can convert those people to returning revenue!

Re:Kennedys in the Enquirer

[rmdingler]

Most do apply their political bias to a news report and then accept or reject it, but some are even too lazy for that much output. I have friends and family who simply parrot what they hear on their one approved news source.

Your comment about the ones yet without a strong bias is thought provoking.

Re:Kennedys in the Enquirer

[bluefoxlucid]

You won't have a strong political bias on many issues. Most people aren't rabid Amazon fanboys or Amazon haters; they use Amazon because it's convenient, until someone tells them Amazon is fucking them and that they should be outraged. Most people donate to the American Red Cross because they've been hit up for money, and because they hear the name a lot--until someone throws them a line about how ARC is a corrupt money-wasting organization.

You might have a political ideal of whether charity or big business is good or bad, but not much of an opinion on a particular business. You're not all that vested in it. We can turn you from a passive actor without a strong bias into a politically-polarized reader with a manufactured opinion pretty damned fast if you're not actively defending yourself against stupidity.

I'm schizoid. My dad's visibly schizotypal; I've watched him rewrite his memories. When something changes that doesn't damage his political beliefs but does make the past messy, he retcons it into history. Republicans supporting Social Security? Hey, remember when Bush was pushing back against the liberal assault on Social Security because they wanted to privatize it so they could get kickbacks from Goldman Sachs and steal all your money? ... yeah, me neither; Bush was the one trying to privatize Social Security ("so the Liberals can't steal the money anymore"). Now that that's flipped, though, he's flipped history around. We've always been at war with Eastasia.

Distorted thinking is dangerous. I don't want to go along for the ride and just swallow whatever any idiot writes, or cling to my own political bias without re-evaluating it in the face of new facts, and end up screaming from the rooftops about FEMA's coffins and the plague they've developed to exterminate 95% of Americans and march the rest into forced labor camps. I like my psychosis, and I like it compartmentalized away from the real world.

I say a lot of things that are uncomfortable, and people sometimes attack me for it. That's okay, as long as I'm otherwise largely-distinct from Hans Reiser's delusional bullshit. On the plus side, people sometimes stop and think when I talk, because I say a lot of things that are uncomfortable for a lot of reasons, some of them too disturbing to simply bury away in the back of your mind and ignore.

Re:Kennedys in the Enquirer

[rmdingler]

Pre-Alzheimers or some such mental decline, I'll always remember two things from childhood: Believe none of what of what you hear and only half of what you see, and, genius and insanity are two sides of the same fence.

Be skeptical of everything, even (and especially) your own belief set.

There's a penalty afforded those with the ability to process information most efficiently. There is certainly some merciful bliss afforded the ignorant, but all a blind person wishes for is to see. Charlie Gordon of Flowers for Algernon didn't like everything he could see at the peak of his mental proficiency.

Denial

[Luthair]

the first phase...

Best Two out of Three?

[bobbied]

Can we test again?

Third time is the charm...

Seems crash testing is a craps shoot with your Tesla anyway..

And?

[Gravis Zero]

Does Tesla really need to be the best on crash safety? Last time I checked, their goal isn't to make the world's safest car. It's not enough to make a safe electric car, it has to be the safest car?

Re:And?

[thegarbz]

Yes they do. They may not be in the business of making the safest car, but part of their reputation now is based on this somewhat incidental claim to fame. The incidental part here being the different structural design that was primarily focused on the things that needed to sit in the frame.

Tesla has been lauded as a king of safety for a while now, so that is part of their brand.

Worth noting is if you dig through the bullshit article they are STILL the king of safety and as noted above this test was introduced after the Model S started production, and the only cars currently passing it are 2017 models which you can count on one hand with change.

Re:And?

[Gravis Zero]

I might agree with you were it not for the tiny detail that the point of Tesla isn't to be a successful car company but rather to push electric cars into the mainstream. Considering recent headlines like VW going all electric and hybrid, I would say they have succeeded in doing just that. What's going to put it over the top is when the gigafactories (they are building more) start cranking out the new solid state batteries in a few years which will drop the price of electric cars while increasing their mileage.

Re:And?

[AmiMoJo]

They were boasting about their crash rating. In the original test they apparently broke the crushing machine that simulates roll-over, and scored top marks in every category. It's on their web site.

Re:And?

[thegarbz]

the tiny detail that the point of Tesla isn't to be a successful car company but rather to push electric cars into the mainstream.

As a matter of interest how do you think this will be achieved in the face of "ANOTHER TESLA CAR BURSTS INTO FLAMES" headlines that they have been battling. You are right in their purpose, but given that the establishment is looking for absolutely any excuse to derail them and even making a few up as they go along, being "the best" even in such side themes as safety is solidly inline with their goal.

Considering recent headlines like VW going all electric and hybrid

To be honest, bad example. I would point to other car companies for some examples. VW royally screwed themselves and their electric direction is a major attempt to reverse their huge emissions scandal. Electric investment even formed a core part of their compensation scheme.

What's going to put it over the top is when the gigafactories (they are building more) start cranking out the new solid state batteries in a few years which will drop the price of electric cars while increasing their mileage.

Agreed, and this is going to have major benefits well beyond cars.

Re:And?

[bluefoxlucid]

How do you design a machine so bad it breaks?

Re:And?

[AmiMoJo]

It wasn't designed badly... They bought an industrial press to test how much pressure the roof of cars could withstand because people were getting crushed to death when they rolled. They bought one specified for every car on the market and then some, but Tesla made a car so ridiculously strong it exceeded the design limit.

Re:And?

[bluefoxlucid]

Yeah but the press should have a thermal protection circuit that cuts the motor if it overheats, and shouldn't be designed to push so hard that its own parts can't take the strain.

Meanwhile

[Hamsterdan]

How many GM, Ford, Chrysler, Audi, BMW, VW or other cars have received that rating? GM hid a defect for about ten years, VAG cheated on Diesel emissions. Takata is going bankrupt over airbag defects, but Tesla is the bad guy here.

Seems like the big guys don't want the new guy to succeed.

Re:Meanwhile

[gumbi west]

IIHS loves to fuck over the automakers by suddenly testing for things they never tested for in the past in order to make them look bad and raise the cost of your insurance

I don't think you know much about insurance. Insurance is a competitive market, so they can't just make up reasons to just charge you more, you can go to another insurer. They can differentiate, so charge you more and your neighbor less because their car is safer--but that's a good thing.

IIHS is far less subject to politics than NHTSA which wasn't allowed to do rollover for the longest time because too many SUVs were going to fail miserably.

Re:Meanwhile

[thegarbz]

Toyota, Mercedes, and Lincon.

3 cars have passed, all current models, none designed in 2011 like the Model S which we insist on holding to ridiculous standards.

Re:Meanwhile

[jittles]

IIHS loves to fuck over the automakers by suddenly testing for things they never tested for in the past in order to make them look bad and raise the cost of your insurance

I don't think you know much about insurance. Insurance is a competitive market, so they can't just make up reasons to just charge you more, you can go to another insurer. They can differentiate, so charge you more and your neighbor less because their car is safer--but that's a good thing.

IIHS is far less subject to politics than NHTSA which wasn't allowed to do rollover for the longest time because too many SUVs were going to fail miserably.

While that is true, I would not be surprised if the IIHS was trying to make sure Teslas could garner a higher premium. The problem is that when a Tesla does get into an accident, they're typically expensive to repair. There was a story about this a few months ago. That alone ought to be enough of a reason for the industry to raise rates but, we all know that corporations are greedy bastards and will do everything they can to improve their bottom line.

Re:Meanwhile

[toddestan]

Tesla really brought this upon themselves. They are the ones that decided to throw a temper-tantrum and attack the IIHS simply because they didn't award them a perfect rating. Nevermind that the Model S is still one of the safest cars out there according to the rating the IIHS did give it. I don't see GM, Ford, Chrysler, Audi, BMW, VW, etc. behaving like this when the IIHS gives them a rating they don't like.

The nut behind the wheel

[Latent Heat]

There is this saying as old as the auto industry that the most critical safety component of any car is "the nut behind the wheel."

This crash safety tests are fine, and IIHS is trying to make them more fine, but they publish interesting (if not macabre) data on vehicle death rates that don't strictly correlate with the crash-test ratings.

Cheap subcompacts favored by first-time new-car buyers do poorly and two-seat sports cars do even worse. You would think that pickup trucks would do well on account of their bulk and mass, but they don't do as well as you would think, although IIHS found that many aren't that great in their crash tests. Boring sedans do OK and Japanese boring sedans do even better, but nothing tops minivans for not killing people.

These real-world results seem to correlate with driver demographics, with cautious Soccer Moms in their minivans being very safe and other people, not as much.

What drove this home, to excuse a pun, is the time you could buy a Corolla with either a Chevy Nova badge or a Toyota. The Chevy was significantly more dangerous even though it came from the same Fremont, CA plant that later got turned into the Tesla factory. Do you suppose that snobs paying the couple-hundred dollar premium to get a proper Toyota drive more carefully?

Re:The nut behind the wheel

[toddestan]

My observations are that minivan drivers are some of the worst on the road, usually because they are driven by inattentive and distracted soccer moms who aren't particularly good at driving such a large vehicle in the first place. Though this is changing because minivans aren't the favored mommy-mobiles that they used to be.

I can believe them being safer though, as minivans (especially newer models) have considerable bulk and mass, and since they have a lower center of gravity, they don't have the same roll-over hazard that makes trucks and SUVs unsafe.

Re: Beginning of the end?

[ArylAkamov]

Shut up old man and tell me how to use the horadric cube.

Re:Beginning of the end?

[Rei]

I saw it constantly. Over and over. Including here at Slashdot.

Re:Beginning of the end?

[gravewax]

In all fairness Tesla are in a position of either the Model 3 is a success or Tesla go broke. a recall or significant failure while awkward in the previous tesla's would be a bank busting disaster in the Model 3. I have no idea how likely either scenario is but a misstep here would definitely be a death sentence.

Australia 100MW award

[spinitch]

A nice little tail wind potential for the stock if they can execute as contracted. The timing nice to help defer some focus in the crash rating results.

And....

[viperidaenz]

it's got shitty headlights.
Low beam never reaches the optimal illumination. High beam only directly in front. Overall rating: Poor

Re: Beginning of the end?

[Anonymous Coward]

But...he just wants you to stay a while and listen...

Re:Beginning of the end?

[omnichad]

Wouldn't that be a sex reassignment surgery and a same-gender marriage?

ALL crash test data is incorrect

[cellocgw]

Here's why: all the crash tests do is tell you the outcome of a crash.
What people **should** care about is the statistical product of crash probability and crash injury.

I"ll take a car with, say, crash avoidance tech which drops the chance of a crash by a factor of 10 over a car with rotten brakes, high rollover risk (American SUVs I'm looking at YOU) , etc. every time. Regardless of the potential injury risk in one specific type of crash.

Reckless Soccer Moms

[Latent Heat]

OK, the Soccer Moms where you live like to take corners in a four-wheel power slide, carve donuts in the soccer field when their kid loses, and go drinking until 2 AM after a game. Who knew?