Elon very clearly asserted last night that the Model 3 has 5-star safety ratings. But the production car isn't even built yet. Surely NHTSA didn't rate yet. Now, admittedly Elon didn't name NHTSA, but he did say 5 star ratings, and anyone half paying attention regarding Tesla over the past 2-3 years knows Elon means NHTSA. And if you look on the Model 3 page of the Tesla website right now, it shows this: How can they be certain? What happens if they get 4 stars? I assume 5 stars is an "aspirational" goal of Elon's, but surely it isn't exactly true yet?
I'm pretty sure he said they expect it to get 5 stars. Even the Model X hasn't been tested by the NHTSA yet but their internal testing shows it at 5 stars in all categories.
"The Model 3 will not just be 5 star in average, it will be 5 star in every category" - Elon Musk, last night at the Model 3 event. Video (at bottom of page) at the 10:00 mark.
Elon is making a prediction rather than saying they already have it. They know what the criteria is for a 5 star rating in every category and they are engineering towards those criteria.
This is not some test or job interview where you walk in not knowing what questions will be asked. The tests are documented and precise so that you can design and test your products with a known test procedure. And why would we doubt Tesla? The Model S already achieved this.
Fine, if you want to split hairs. But the Model 3 page doesn't say "will" it just shows a fact of 5-stars. I am confident they'll achieve it, I just don't want them jinxing it. Heck, put it this way. If a non-Tesla-friendly candidate gets elected President in November, there could be a new head of NHTSA next year, someone friendly with, say, the Kochs, and willing to be "influenced" above or below the table to give Tesla a less than 5-star rating.
Easy: design it with the same principles as the Model S Many automakers are achieving safety ratings across their model range (Subaru , anyone?) using one platform modified for several cars.
I recall from the X reveal that they were approaching what would be the 6th star in probability of passenger injury. If Tesla is shooting for that with the 3 it would be easy to say it will achieve 5 stars with confidence.
When they tested the Model S it actually broke the roof crushing machine....I think they will figure it out just fine.
Tesla submitted 2013 to 2015 RWD S models, and they all did 5 across the board: 2011 & Newer - Search Results | Safercar -- National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)
Other car companies "engineer" to the testing standards. If you check out the Model S testing, you will see that Model S surpassed the standards, in every category. And even in places where there were no standards, they excel. Other brands' ratings dropped when, all of a sudden, NHTSA started doing testing from a different angle than before, and everybody scrambled to re"engineer" the cars. Except Tesla. And computer modeling is pretty exact. They know they can pass all the standards and any new tests some people haven't even thought of yet.
This is true to some extent, but it also worried me a bit that IIHS offered to test the Model S if Tesla petitioned them to do so, and Tesla declined. Part of that was, I'm sure, a hedge against losing their NHTSA rating marketing being the "highest rated car ever." On the other hand, I kind of wonder if they had some idea that the car only performed OK, not great, in the small overlap frontal test... a new test that many modern vehicles have failed, which the NHTSA doesn't test, and which Tesla may not have designed to. So I think it's hard to justify a claim that the Model S surpassed the standards in every category when, to this day, it hasn't been tested in every category.
Computer simulation in crash testing is extremely sophisticated nowadays. You don't need to crash real car to know with very high certainty that it can reach certain star rating. Plus, the same team has been designing 5-star cars for years, they know exacting where to reinforce and how they design the structure to achieve this.
I suspect they have tested real prototype body-in-white structures and thus are confident that it will get 5-stars.
