After brutal crash tests were conducted on the Tesla Model 3, the U.S. government decided to award the fully electric car with its highest honor and gave it a five-star rating in every safety category that has been set so far by the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
As the Daily Mail reported, viewers who watch the slow-motion footage of the crash test on the Tesla Model 3 can see the car being forcibly pummeled in test crashes to the front and rear of the vehicle, while also testing to see how the Model 3 would respond to rollovers and side crashes.
Since 1978, the NHTSA has been crash testing cars in this manner to see how they would hold up in real-life scenarios, and the Tesla Model 3 was proven a winner in this respect, with Elon Musk previously stating that he believed the Model 3 would be proven to be the safest car out there. In this, he was certainly not wrong.
The success of the Model 3 may have seemed assured, but this was not the case, especially with Musk describing the “production hell” of the past year that his company suffered under such high demand for this electric vehicle. Yet, just like Tesla’s Model S and Model X, which have also been given the same five-star rating by the NHTSA, the Model 3 has now had the same honor bestowed upon it.
Tesla Model 3 sedan aces all of U.S. safety agency’s crash tests https://t.co/LlFD0pHtiE
— Bloomberg (@business) September 20, 2018
However, ever the perfectionist, Elon Musk has taken to Twitter to proclaim that further stats by the NHTSA could prove that the Model 3 is, simply put, the safest car to drive in all of America.
“All 5 star are *not* the same… “5 star” just means a car met a certain threshold, but injury probability stats (real numbers) tell you by how much. NHTSA will post final safety probability stats soon. Model 3 has a shot at being safest car ever tested.”
The crash ratings for the Tesla Model 3 were helped immensely by the fact that there is no internal combustion engine in these cars, which means that with the forward crumple zone there is much more room. Also helping to save it from rollovers are the helpful addition of battery backs beneath the vehicle. In fact, according to the NHTSA, if you are driving a Model 3 the chances of suffering from a rollover accident are a mere 6.6 percent, which is down considerably from the 10 percent that is allotted to traditional cars of the same size.
Tesla piece on the physics of car safety coming soon for those interested in technical details
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 20, 2018
With the latest five-star rating for the Tesla Model 3 by the NHTSA, now might be a good time to place your order if you are looking for the most stunning, and quite possibly the safest, car currently on the American market, as judged by the government.