Tesla Model S Fails To Get Top IIHS Crash Rating (usatoday.com) 80
mrspoonsi writes: Shares in Tesla have plummeted more than 13 percent this week after lower than expected deliveries and the Model S only attaining an acceptable result in recent crash tests. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety states: "Tesla made changes to the safety belt in vehicles built after January with the intent of reducing the dummy's forward movement. However, when IIHS tested the modified Model S, the same problem occurred, and the rating didn't change. Although the two tested vehicles had identical structure, the second test resulted in greater intrusion into the driver's space because the left front wheel movement wasn't consistent. Maximum intrusion increased from less than 2 inches to 11 inches in the lower part and to 5 inches at the instrument panel in the second test. The first test resulted in a good rating for structural integrity, while the second test resulted in an acceptable structural rating. The two tests' structural ratings were combined, resulting in acceptable structure and an acceptable rating overall for the Model S." A Tesla spokesperson responded to the IIHS's crash rating in a statement to Forbes: "IIHS and dozens of other private industry groups around the world have methods and motivations that suit their own subjective purposes."
Motivation (Score:1, Insightful)
""IIHS and dozens of other private industry groups around the world have methods and motivations that suit their own subjective purposes."
yep driver and passenger safety, obviously Telsa's motivations differ significantly.
Re:Motivation (Score:5, Insightful)
Telsa has a history of squabbling with safety testing regimes
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/11/21/1959244/nhtsa-tells-tesla-to-stop-exaggerating-model-s-safety-rating [slashdot.org]
Re:Motivation (Score:4, Insightful)
Forbes truncated their quote (and worse, added in a period to make it look like that ended a sentence). The actual quote is:
The quote appears deliberately truncated to try to make it look like Tesla is badmouthing the IIHS, when they're very clearly just saying that they think the NHTSA testing is more meaningful. While that's a debatable point (I see no realistic reason to favour one over the other), Forbes' truncation is pretty questionable. Of course, what do you expect from an opinion piece that in its second sentence all but calls Tesla a cult?
The reality is that the failed test ("small overlap") is a new test developed in 2012, after the Model S design was already completed; it was never designed to the test, only adapted to try to meet it (apparently unsuccessfully thusfar). To be fair to Tesla, this same issue has hit numerous other manufacturers; only three vehicles at present pass get the best rating in it (two of them new designs from 2017) - and Tesla did manage the second best rating. On the other hand, Tesla wants to build part of its reputation on being a leader in safety, and the small overlap crash test, while new, is meaningful. It's the equivalent of sideswiping a utility pole or similar - a very real type of crash that has previously not been well represented in existing crash tests. Tesla needs to get this right next year.
The nut behind the wheel (Score:2, Interesting)
There is this saying as old as the auto industry that the most critical safety component of any car is "the nut behind the wheel."
This crash safety tests are fine, and IIHS is trying to make them more fine, but they publish interesting (if not macabre) data on vehicle death rates that don't strictly correlate with the crash-test ratings.
Cheap subcompacts favored by first-time new-car buyers do poorly and two-seat sports cars do even worse. You would think that pickup trucks would do well on account of
Reckless Soccer Moms (Score:2)
OK, the Soccer Moms where you live like to take corners in a four-wheel power slide, carve donuts in the soccer field when their kid loses, and go drinking until 2 AM after a game. Who knew?
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My observations are that minivan drivers are some of the worst on the road, usually because they are driven by inattentive and distracted soccer moms who aren't particularly good at driving such a large vehicle in the first place. Though this is changing because minivans aren't the favored mommy-mobiles that they used to be.
I can believe them being safer though, as minivans (especially newer models) have considerable bulk and mass, and since they have a lower center of gravity, they don't have the same rol
Re:Motivation (Score:5, Interesting)
The IIHS tests are made by the folks who have to pay out money for insurance claims, and are designed to weed out failure modes they are seeing in actual crashes which led them to pay out more than they were expecting. They made the driver's side overlap tests specifically because they saw it as a weakness with the NHTSA tests. The NHTSA test only covers impacts directly from the front and the side. Yet they were seeing a lot of claims from impacts where cars didn't hit head-on and the intrusion thus bypassed most or all the crash-resistance designed to satisfy the NHTSA test.
Those are the scenarios that the IIHS test is trying to replicate. Passing the "small" version of the overlap test successfully is important because if the car can't, it may actually be better for the driver to let a greater portion of the car's front hit the oncoming vehicle/obstacle, rather than to try to avoid it and only receive a glancing blow. As the size of the impact area shrinks, the stresses on the section receiving the impact increases because there's less material absorbing the same crash energy. So the crash-resistance should be concentrated mostly along the sides, tapering off as you move inwards (perhaps increasing again towards the center). That is what this test is encouraging car designers to do. A car could be designed to let its left or right side completely shear off in a collision which misses the center of the front bumper, and still be completely NHTSA-compliant.
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If the small overlap test was invented in 2012, how did the Volvo s80 pass it in 2007? http://www.iihs.org/iihs/ratin... [iihs.org] click on "other model years" to see the test results through time.
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That's easy to explain based on the source you cite:
For Small overlap front: "Tested vehicle 2014 Volvo S80 3.2 4-door" ( http://www.iihs.org/iihs/ratings/vehicle/v/volvo/s80-4-door-sedan/2007 )
I guess they apply the same result to all preceding years during which the model was not altered.
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I'll buy that.
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Yeah this is bad journalism. Can we get the whole quote added to the summary?
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Re:Beginning of the end? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, are we restarting the old TTAC "Tesla Death Watch" feature, with its regular columns predicting the imminent death of Tesla back in the early Roadster days?
I always get a grin when I thumb through that, now that Tesla is worth as much as a major automaker and just about to start rolling out an EV (Model 3) in production numbers and with a performance/price point widely mocked as impossible just a few years ago... back when they were just starting to roll out an EV (Model S) in production numbers and with a performance/price point widely mocked as impossible a few years before that.... back when they were just starting to roll out an EV (Roadster) in production numbers and with a performance/price point widely mocked as impossible a few years before that....
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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But...he just wants you to stay a while and listen...
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I saw it constantly. Over and over. Including here at Slashdot.
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Wouldn't that be a sex reassignment surgery and a same-gender marriage?
An "Acceptable" safety rating? (Score:5, Funny)
Kennedys in the Enquirer (Score:2)
You will very seldom see a story lead with, "Chevrolet driver involved in accident due to mechanical failure!"
Musk's Dog caught in neighbor's garbage
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Does anyone wonder why every negative story involving the Tesla or Elon Musk receives coverage entirely out of balance with the rest of the Corporate news.
You will very seldom see a story lead with, "Chevrolet driver involved in accident due to mechanical failure!"
Musk's Dog caught in neighbor's garbage
Musk hypes everything up, he loves attention and so he gets attention in return. Plus, Tesla is a growth company with a lot of legitimate questions regarding sustainability (see link below), so the investment analysts are going to talk about it a lot. There are reports on other car companies, but their are fewer question marks with established companies, and those articles don't get posted on slashdot.
I would not invest in Tesla right now. I've never seen such shorting on such a large company, and from m
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Musk hypes everything up, he loves attention and so he gets attention in return. Plus, Tesla is a growth company with a lot of legitimate questions regarding sustainability (see link below), so the investment analysts are going to talk about it a lot. There are reports on other car companies, but their are fewer question marks with established companies, and those articles don't get posted on slashdot.
Ever drive by those car lots that have the most flamboyant, garish, ubiquitous television advertisements? They are always full of people kicking tires.
There may be Space entrepreneurs [mrt.com] strapped for cash and investors, but it ain't the South African.
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Because it's novel, thus unknown, and you can get people to see you as a source of security by making them feel threatened by something else. They see that you saved them with knowledge, and come back to you.
Unethical journalism to construct stories of villainy from big organizations people trust is a staple of ProPublica. They've repeatedly released American Red Cross Lessons Learned documentation--stuff that says what went wrong, what went right, what they'd do different if they did it again, why it wen
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Your comment about the ones yet without a strong bias is thought provoking.
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You won't have a strong political bias on many issues. Most people aren't rabid Amazon fanboys or Amazon haters; they use Amazon because it's convenient, until someone tells them Amazon is fucking them and that they should be outraged. Most people donate to the American Red Cross because they've been hit up for money, and because they hear the name a lot--until someone throws them a line about how ARC is a corrupt money-wasting organization.
You might have a political ideal of whether charity or big bus
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Be skeptical of everything, even (and especially) your own belief set.
There's a penalty afforded those with the ability to process information most efficiently. There is certainly some merciful bliss afforded the ignorant, but all a blind person wishes for is to see. Charlie Gordon of Flower [cliffsnotes.com]
Denial (Score:2)
Best Two out of Three? (Score:2)
Can we test again?
Third time is the charm...
Seems crash testing is a craps shoot with your Tesla anyway..
And? (Score:3)
Does Tesla really need to be the best on crash safety? Last time I checked, their goal isn't to make the world's safest car. It's not enough to make a safe electric car, it has to be the safest car?
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Yes they do. They may not be in the business of making the safest car, but part of their reputation now is based on this somewhat incidental claim to fame. The incidental part here being the different structural design that was primarily focused on the things that needed to sit in the frame.
Tesla has been lauded as a king of safety for a while now, so that is part of their brand.
Worth noting is if you dig through the bullshit article they are STILL the king of safety and as noted above this test was introdu
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I might agree with you were it not for the tiny detail that the point of Tesla isn't to be a successful car company but rather to push electric cars into the mainstream. Considering recent headlines like VW going all electric and hybrid, I would say they have succeeded in doing just that. What's going to put it over the top is when the gigafactories (they are building more) start cranking out the new solid state batteries in a few years which will drop the price of electric cars while increasing their mil
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the tiny detail that the point of Tesla isn't to be a successful car company but rather to push electric cars into the mainstream.
As a matter of interest how do you think this will be achieved in the face of "ANOTHER TESLA CAR BURSTS INTO FLAMES" headlines that they have been battling. You are right in their purpose, but given that the establishment is looking for absolutely any excuse to derail them and even making a few up as they go along, being "the best" even in such side themes as safety is solidly inline with their goal.
Considering recent headlines like VW going all electric and hybrid
To be honest, bad example. I would point to other car companies for some examples. VW royally screwed themsel
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They were boasting about their crash rating. In the original test they apparently broke the crushing machine that simulates roll-over, and scored top marks in every category. It's on their web site.
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It wasn't designed badly... They bought an industrial press to test how much pressure the roof of cars could withstand because people were getting crushed to death when they rolled. They bought one specified for every car on the market and then some, but Tesla made a car so ridiculously strong it exceeded the design limit.
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Yeah but the press should have a thermal protection circuit that cuts the motor if it overheats, and shouldn't be designed to push so hard that its own parts can't take the strain.
Meanwhile (Score:5, Insightful)
How many GM, Ford, Chrysler, Audi, BMW, VW or other cars have received that rating? GM hid a defect for about ten years, VAG cheated on Diesel emissions. Takata is going bankrupt over airbag defects, but Tesla is the bad guy here.
Seems like the big guys don't want the new guy to succeed.
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IIHS loves to fuck over the automakers by suddenly testing for things they never tested for in the past in order to make them look bad and raise the cost of your insurance
I don't think you know much about insurance. Insurance is a competitive market, so they can't just make up reasons to just charge you more, you can go to another insurer. They can differentiate, so charge you more and your neighbor less because their car is safer--but that's a good thing.
IIHS is far less subject to politics than NHTSA which wasn't allowed to do rollover for the longest time because too many SUVs were going to fail miserably.
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IIHS loves to fuck over the automakers by suddenly testing for things they never tested for in the past in order to make them look bad and raise the cost of your insurance
I don't think you know much about insurance. Insurance is a competitive market, so they can't just make up reasons to just charge you more, you can go to another insurer. They can differentiate, so charge you more and your neighbor less because their car is safer--but that's a good thing.
IIHS is far less subject to politics than NHTSA which wasn't allowed to do rollover for the longest time because too many SUVs were going to fail miserably.
While that is true, I would not be surprised if the IIHS was trying to make sure Teslas could garner a higher premium. The problem is that when a Tesla does get into an accident, they're typically expensive to repair. There was a story about this a few months ago. That alone ought to be enough of a reason for the industry to raise rates but, we all know that corporations are greedy bastards and will do everything they can to improve their bottom line.
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Toyota, Mercedes, and Lincon.
3 cars have passed, all current models, none designed in 2011 like the Model S which we insist on holding to ridiculous standards.
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Tesla really brought this upon themselves. They are the ones that decided to throw a temper-tantrum and attack the IIHS simply because they didn't award them a perfect rating. Nevermind that the Model S is still one of the safest cars out there according to the rating the IIHS did give it. I don't see GM, Ford, Chrysler, Audi, BMW, VW, etc. behaving like this when the IIHS gives them a rating they don't like.
Australia 100MW award (Score:1)
And.... (Score:2)
it's got shitty headlights.
Low beam never reaches the optimal illumination. High beam only directly in front. Overall rating: Poor
ALL crash test data is incorrect (Score:2)
Here's why: all the crash tests do is tell you the outcome of a crash.
What people **should** care about is the statistical product of crash probability and crash injury.
I"ll take a car with, say, crash avoidance tech which drops the chance of a crash by a factor of 10 over a car with rotten brakes, high rollover risk (American SUVs I'm looking at YOU) , etc. every time. Regardless of the potential injury risk in one specific type of crash.