3rd row crash safety?

[jerry33]

Bummer, I was hoping someone had seen something I hadn't. I'm sure Tesla has done a metric **** ton of simulations for every conceivable crash type, including to the rear. But I guess I wouldn't be surprised if Tesla did not do any more physical crash tests than are strictly required. Which to be clear I am fine with. Simulations of sufficient complexity probably tell you just as much as crash dummies these days.

I believe they had a number of physical crash tests done as well to verify the simulations. The "Tesla did not do any more physical crash tests than are strictly required" isn't accurate because the NHTSA tests aren't done by Tesla. As far as I know the minimum number of crash tests that the manufacturer is required to do is zero. Of course, a manufacturer would be rather foolish to do zero because their simulations might be in error and it would be pretty embarrassing to not know in advance what the NHTSA would find in their tests. But I got the impression from what Elon has said is that they did many more physical crashes than the NHTSA did.