Tesla tops the charts where it matters most...

Unless they're outright lying, they did say that the roof took 3x the car's weight (they could count 1 as natural gravity).

Curmudgeon wrote:

DaveEstey wrote:

Curmudgeon wrote: It weighs 4637 pounds. http://www.teslamotors.com/models/specs Rollover roof crush rating off the charts. The CTS-V wagon weighs 4425 pounds. http://www.cadillac.com/cts-v-luxury-wagon/features-specs/dimensions.html Rollover roof crush rating 'Good'. The manufacturers need to quit pretending they can't build in a reasonable cabin integrated roll cage. Obviously Tesla can do it. http://www.iihs.org/ratings/roof/detailsbyclass.aspx?10

"good" is the best rating the IIHS gives out.

True. But the Tesla BROKE THE TEST EQUIPMENT without failing. The others' roof structures failed at some point in the testing That's what I'm getting at.

At what point did the others' roof stuctures roofs fail? I think that data would be useful a comparison.

A couple thoughts:

• What is "strong enough" for a road car's roof rating? You can't say "make it as strong as possible", because it's possible to make it support hundreds of times the car's weight if you make the windows small enough and add enough bracing.

• Is the 4x of the Tesla a statistically significant improvement relative to the 1x or 2x or other road cars? Rollovers are not common accidents (at least, not for sedans, SUVs may be a different story), and many rollovers don't involve any significant roof crushing at all, whereas others are big enough to crush any roof. So there might conceivably only be one accident a year in which that 4x roof makes any difference.

• The Model S is still a low volume car, is the roof structure that it uses suited high volume production? For example, it's entirely possible to build 1000 cars a year with a carbon fiber roof, and to find it economically impossible to scale that up to 100,000 cars per year. I can't find any articles talking about composite structures in the Model S, so I'd assume it's an aluminum or steel roof structure, but I don't know.

IIHS "In the Institute's roof strength test, a metal plate is pushed against 1 side of a roof at a constant speed. To earn a good rating, the roof must withstand a force of 4 times the vehicle's weight before reaching 5 inches of crush. This is called a strength-to-weight ratio. For an acceptable rating, the minimum required strength-to-weight ratio is 3.25. A marginal rating value is 2.5. Anything lower than that is poor."

Knurled wrote: Tesla will never top the charts because hair metal is a niche.

love will find a way...

someone needs to start another car company that steals all of the good ideas from the Tesla cars and eventually causes them to go bankrupt.. they could call their company "Edison".

In reply to novaderrik:

If they had a model called the Medicine, then I'd rock it. Err, buy it.

DaveEstey wrote: IIHS "In the Institute's roof strength test, a metal plate is pushed against 1 side of a roof at a constant speed. To earn a good rating, the roof must withstand a force of 4 times the vehicle's weight before reaching 5 inches of crush. This is called a strength-to-weight ratio. For an acceptable rating, the minimum required strength-to-weight ratio is 3.25. A marginal rating value is 2.5. Anything lower than that is poor."

So there's not a huge difference between the Tesla S and CTS, both took somewhere between 4x~5x the car's weight to the roof, but maybe the additional weight of the Tesla was enough to break the machine.

codrus wrote: Rollovers are not common accidents (at least, not for sedans, SUVs may be a different story),

Actually while the rate is more for SUVs, twice as many cars roll over every year as SUVs (approx 4000 cars vs 2000 SUVs) according to the NHTSA database.

Update: Tesla was outright lying about the record. The Model S got the maximum score of 5 stars. The NHTSA caps ratings at 5 stars.

http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2013/08/nhtsa-pushes-back-on-teslas-safest-car-ever-claims-for-model-s/?ModPagespeed=noscript

GameboyRMH wrote: Update: Tesla was outright lying about the record. The Model S got the maximum score of 5 stars. The NHTSA caps ratings at 5 stars. http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2013/08/nhtsa-pushes-back-on-teslas-safest-car-ever-claims-for-model-s/?ModPagespeed=noscript

TTAC is now held in lower esteem by me than even Jalkopnik. Their reporting is worse than tabloid level.

The NHTSA rated the car at 5 starts and gave Tesla the full report that showed 5.4, that's their claim and they posted the proof. The NHTSA is just trying to point out that all 5 star cars are the same, which BS because their not (you can score 4 stars in an individual test and still have a 5 star overall, the Tesla got 5's everywhere).

Rut roh Resla

http://www.autoblog.com/2013/08/22/nhtsa-rebuffs-tesla-model-s-safest-car-claim-video/#continued

maybe Tesla could clarify it by putting a little "e" in front of the crash test rating like hybrids do to the mpg to get a higher rating?

GameboyRMH wrote: Update: Tesla was outright lying about the record. The Model S got the maximum score of 5 stars. The NHTSA caps ratings at 5 stars. http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2013/08/nhtsa-pushes-back-on-teslas-safest-car-ever-claims-for-model-s/?ModPagespeed=noscript

"“No matter what, you can’t say it’s the safest car ever tested, just that it had the best overall test score of any vehicle tested by NHTSA.”"

So does their test test the safety of the car or not? If it had the best overall test score on safety tests, doesn't that make it by definition the safest car ever tested? And if their safety tests don't actually test safety (as Clarence Ditlow is implying by saying this), then why even bother?

CYA legalese..

someone could get killed in a Tesla in an accident that was similar to an accident in a rusted out Yugo where the guy walked away..