At least Elon Musk can celebrate the Tesla Model 3's perfect safety rating
Finally, some news Tesla can brag about.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) recently tested the new Tesla Model 3 (yes, the same car that forced CEO Elon Musk to sleep at the Tesla factory). The results? A perfect five-star safety rating for the rear-wheel and all-wheel drive versions of the Tesla Model 3.
Tesla, buried in endless problems like SEC lawsuits and terrible Elon Musk tweets, made sure to put the safety test results front and center Sunday.
In a blog post titled, "Model 3 achieves the lowest probability of injury of any vehicle ever tested by NHTSA," the company boasted that "not only has Model 3 achieved a perfect 5-star safety rating in every category and sub-category, but NHTSA’s tests also show that it has the lowest probability of injury of all cars the safety agency has ever tested."
The car company made sure to remind us that its Model S and Model X cars also scored well, "making Tesla vehicles the best ever rated by NHTSA."
Publicly available crash reports do show high marks for the newest Tesla and its predecessors, but NHTSA officials said the organization doesn't rank the safest, five-star cars.
The car was tested in front, side, and rollover crash situations -- and in every test received the maximum five stars.
Tesla says the fact that the heaviest components, like the battery pack, are close to the car's center of gravity makes the Model 3 so safe. For front crashes, Tesla hailed its "superior front crumple zone that is optimized to absorb energy and crush more efficiently."
If only the CEO performed as well as his vehicles.
Sasha is a news writer at Mashable's San Francisco office. She's an SF native who went to UC Davis and later received her master's from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She's been reporting out of her hometown over the years at Bay City News (news wire), SFGate (the San Francisco Chronicle website), and even made it out of California to write for the Chicago Tribune. She's been described as a bookworm and a gym rat.
