With a crunch and a cringe, Elon Musk's week just got worse. His Tesla Model S sedan just took home a disappointing"acceptable" score on something called a small overlap front test, marring the company's reputation for five-star safety.
That bit of bad news came even as Tesla's stock price plummeted 20 percent amid concerns that the company won't hit its production goals for the Model 3 sedan.
A little perspective is in order, though. The Model S still sailed through four of five crash tests administered by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. But that one "acceptable" score makes the S ineligible for the agency's coveted “Top Safety Pick.” (The IIHS tested a Model S with a 75-kWh battery back, so the results don’t apply to the cars with the 100-kWh pack. Tesla did not reply to a request for comment.)
It’s a bummer for Tesla, which likes to boast about its safety accomplishments. In 2013, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration gave the Model S a five-star rating. Last year, the feds concluded Tesla’s self-driving Autopilot system can reduce crashes by 40 percent.
To be fair, plenty of cars have bungled the small overlap front crash test. IIHS created it five years ago to improve safety during crashes in which a car hits something—another vehicle, a tree, whatever—with an impact to one side of the bumper, not the center.
“It’s like a frontal crash that almost doesn’t happen,” says David Zuby, chief research officer at IIHS. He estimates that the test represents about 25 percent of frontal collisions that seriously injure or kill someone.
What makes this test so difficult is the front crumple zone doesn't extend all the way across the front of the car because the wheels need space to turn. Automakers, Zuby says, must figure out how to divert impact energy into that structure—and away from passengers.
Automakers also must control what happens to the front wheel and suspension in a corner impact. IIHS found that in this test of the Model S, the front left wheel shattered, and the brake rotor and caliper penetrated the passenger compartment. Meanwhile, the dummy’s head hit the steering wheel (through the airbag). “Maybe Tesla hadn’t thought through everything that needs to occur once you get past the front bumper area,” Zuby says.
While lots of cars have had trouble with this overlap test—the Fiat 500, Nissan Leaf, Dodge Challenger, and Toyota Tundra all scored a “marginal” or “poor” rating—many of the cars in the Model S’s class nailed it, including the Mercedes-Benz E-Class, Genesis G80 and G90, BMW 5 Series, Lexus RC, and Lincoln Continental.
“It’s not a major black mark against an automaker or a model,” Zuby says. “But we think that for those cars that aren’t earning the ‘Good’ rating, they can do something to improve protection.” Tesla cars have a solid structure to work with, Zuby says. “They just need to think more about these kinds of crashes.”
One more thing for Musk to add to his ever-growing pile of to-do projects.
