Tesla Model 3 Earns Five-Star Crash Safety Rating From NHTSA (jalopnik.com)

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has awarded the Tesla Model 3 with a five-star safety rating -- the highest possible score. This means that every car Tesla has built has earned a five-star rating. Jalopnik reports: The NHTSA tests cover three primary categories: Frontal Crash, Side Crash, and Rollover, and the Model 3 received the highest ratings in all categories. For some categories, it's easy to understand why Teslas do so well. Rollover resistance, for example, makes sense for cars that carry most of their weight at the very bottom, in the batteries sandwiched in the Tesla's chassis design. Other reasons for the remarkable crash safety may be that, without the need for a heavy chunk of metal as a drivetrain, effective and large crumple zones can be designed in, front and rear. The NHTSA has released videos of their frontal collision test, side pole collision test, and side collision test, for those who like watching these sort of things.

Comments

Tesla has a ~20% profit margin

[SuperKendall]

Hey, when you sell cars below cost

Well we all know AC's lie, but by how much?

Here's a good example of a real-life measurement you can use to determine how much fabrication goes into the average AC statement, because Tesla has around a 20% profit margin per car - 5x higher than Ford. Kind of a lot different than "losing money on every car".

Hey, who you gonna believe, a smooth-talking AC where *certainly* has nothing against Tesla, or your lying Ars?

Re:Tesla has a ~20% profit margin

[LynnwoodRooster]

Funny, Tesla's published GAAP financials say you are wrong. Their gross profit may be positive, but include the REQUIRED SG&A expenses needed to make that revenue (SG&A being Sales, General and Administrative - functions you CANNOT live without if you want to, you know, actually sell, deliver, and coordinate manufacturing) and they lost money.

Now add in interest only - not even principal payments - and you're at a bigger loss. And this is interest needed to see the production even happen - not including R&D or any of the other "ancillary" operations. Gross margin minus SG&A minus interest payments and you're at $300 million lost.

And of course, if you look at their OWN FINANCIALS, you will see that last quarter they lost $717 million overall. How do you have a positive profit margin if you lose money? You're either ignorant or lying - but because I've told you this several times - I'll choose lying.

Go ahead, show the financial report (not carefully selected items out of the REQUIRED SEC postings) that show they make a profit. You can't. Sorry!

Re:Tesla has a ~20% profit margin

[Rei]

but include the REQUIRED SG&A expenses

Totally. When Tesla runs a welding robot faster, that totally makes them build and fill a new office building!

SG&A is not part of gross margin for a reason: it does not rise in correlation with production volumes as a production line spools up. Increasing production rates on a line lowersCOGS, by decreasing hardware depreciation. Without refining of proction processes, labour costs increases linearly with volumes (labour being only a fraction of COGS), but refining production processes - something that happens every month as a new line matures - decreases labour. SG&A, by contrast, scales at a far-below-linear relationship to production volumes. Stamping out panels faster doesn't mean that you need to hire a new janitor. Simplifying how to attach two components with less labour doesn't mean you have to hire a new webmaster. Reducing interruptions in the paint shop doesn't mean you have to hire a new director of accounting. Heck, should we even bother talking about the SG&A expense that is operating the supercharger network - formerly a (expensive) loss leader, but presently converting to a profit centre as Model 3 volumes expand, and for which the vast majority ofchargers (aka those in less densely populated areas) are able to vastly increase their service volumes without any capital expenses?

I also love the fact that you never mention the fact that Tesla took a SG&A hit in Q2 in order to reduce its SG&A expenses from Q3 onward, but let's not worry our little heads about that!

Re:Tesla has a ~20% profit margin

[Rei]

lot of those expenses are things like improving the service centres to cope with the demand

That's not SG&A, that's "Services and Other". Services and Other cost Tesla a net $116M in Q2, vs. revenue of $4B, aka eating up less than 3% of their gross margin.

There were already ridiculous delays getting parts and basic repairs done, six months not being unusual for things like accident damage.

6 months is highly unusual. Of course, you can always find some body shop somewhere for any brand that has hundreds of thousands of vehicles on the road that takes an inordinate amount of time. That doesn't make that "normal". Want to make there be zero cases of abnormal crash repair times (for shorts to find out about and share widely every chance they get) when you don't control the body shops? Good luck with that.

S & X repairs from accidents are usually several weeks to a month. But these are much lower volume vehicles than the 3. In the Model 3 Owners Survey, the average repair took under a week. Speaking of Model 3 repairs...

Re:Any people wonder why the model 3 is hot

[Solandri]

You do realize that nearly all popular car models get a 5-star crash test rating? It's just that for some reason, a car getting a 5-star safety rating becomes a front-page news story only when it's a Tesla.

(This is not to denigrate Tesla's safety engineering. The lead safety engineer at BMW gave a guest lecture at my graduate structural engineering class. To our surprise, safety is dead last in the design process. First the artist designs the basic shape of the car. Then all the engineers design the mechanical and electrical components to fit within the artist-defined shape. Finally the safety engineer is given a budget of (say) 25 kg of steel, and told to add reinforcement to make the car pass the government and insurance institute safety tests. So all it would take to design a safer car is to move the safety engineer earlier in the design process, which I believe Tesla has done.)

Re: Any people wonder why the model 3 is hot

[Rei]

In all categories and all subcategories as well? No, that is not normal, even for luxury cars. Seriously, just compare the pole tests for starters.

Re:Any people wonder why the model 3 is hot

[Anonymous Coward]

Overall five stars yes, but not all 5 stars.
There are [only] two other cars that get rated as high: The Toyota Camry and Subaru Forester
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidkiley5/2018/09/20/can-tesla-model-3s-five-star-nhtsa-rating-change-elon-musks-bad-month/#42426833103b

Re:Any people wonder why the model 3 is hot

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny story I looked it up,

Since you used BMW as an example I checked of the 522 BMWs that NHTSA has data for on their website only 18 received 5 stars in frontal crash ratings....and all of those 18 vehicles only got 4 stars on their rollover ratings, i believe they were all SUVs.

so no, apparently it's not all that easy to get 5 stars in frontal, side, and rollover crash ratings