Slashdot Mirror
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.
Model 3s have been driven (calculations in a previous Slashdot article) about 300-400 million miles so far. In the US, there's a car fire once in every ~20 million miles. So far the shorts (who've been desperate to find any Model 3 fires they can find) have found evidence of one - count it, one - fire in a Model 3. And that was in a Model 3 at the factory (salvage yard: Fremont; miles on the odometer: 1), not an owner vehicle. And when you look at the damage, it's heaviest on the front bumper, least around the battery.
Meanwhile, new BMWs in South Korea have been catching fire at a rate of half a dozen vehicles per month. Not cars in accidents - most of them have been in parked cars. But of course, we don't report on things like that because, hey, they're not Tesla. Tesla is one of the few automakers which has not had to have fire-related recalls in the past several years. A number of major automakers have had to in the past several months. Gee, who would have ever thought that a combustion vehicle, propelled by combusting a highly flammable fuel, might sometimes have issues with unintended combustion?
"Who the hell is Nietzche? It's a question stupid people are asking." -- Newscaster, "Jesus Christ Supercop"
How does a comment like this get a "4, Informative" rating? The reason that it's news is that it has received a 5-star safety rating in EVERY CATEGORY rather than just an overall 5-star category (which is generally achieved with ratings lower than 5-stars in several categories). I mean.. If you're going to complain about it being news all over, it would be a good idea to read one sample rather than just the Slashdot summary (which of course also misses the point, but that's to be expected).