Tesla's Safety Record is Growing
Tesla's car design creates a large crumple zone and for years this feature has been saving lives. As more Teslas models are sold, the safety narrative takes on bigger meaning.
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**For the next couple of weeks, Plugged In will be providing excerpts from “Why Tesla is the Leader in the EV industry.” This is the first one: Winning Safety.
Image Caption | Tesla’s safety record is impressive and the groundswell of accounts about Teslas saving lives is ofter overlooked by traditional media coverage.
Tesla produces electric cars at a high level and has been doing this for over 10 years. What separates Tesla from traditional automakers has been its clean sheet design for electric cars, compared to legacy automakers and its gas-to-electric design adaptations, and this approach has produced paradigm shift for Tesla car safety.
Tesla’s car design — no engine — produces a large crumple zone in the front of the car, called the frunk, and is a huge safety feature as it reduces crash impediments from entering the car’s interior during head-on collisions.
However, safety is not a big reason for Tesla car sales, according to most surveys.
As with most things Tesla, the car’s safety bonafides have a life of its own. There’s a Twitter handle called Tesla Saves Lives even.
The more substantial attribute to the safety conversation is the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and its safety ratings for cars. In 2019, Model X made history when it became the first and only SUV to ever receive a 5-star safety rating in every category and sub-category from the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
NHTSA recently created the new U.S. Car Assessment Program rating to provide consumers with information about crash protection and rollover safety of new vehicles beyond what is required by Federal law.
“Tesla came up with the lowest probability of injury metric, which is part of the new U.S. Car Assessment Program (NCAP) rating,” said Madan Gopal, functional lead and principal safety engineer, in 2018. The Model 3 has the lowest probability of injury and there are a total of 900 plus vehicles since 2011 that have been rated.”
And Tesla owners are thankful.
As mentioned, Tesla owners on Twitter have posted a multitude of stories about crashes and the ability for a Model 3, S or X to protect drivers and passengers. See below:
Full self-driving (FSD) is another component to the safety-rich story from Tesla, as automated driving predictions show the ability for automated driving to create safer road conditions in the future.
But, for now, the FSD and the safety story will have to wait as the company releases the latest rewrite of the software.
FSD is another possible safety plaudit for the future, but for now the NHTSA ratings and proof in the pudding may help more buyers be convinced of a Tesla car model for their family.
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FSD and Autopilot from Tesla, some background
For more information about autopilot and FSD ambitions, check out this video from Tesla’s lead engineer for AI and computer vision, Andrej Karpathy, Tesla’s head of AI and computer vision