6 ms·

Tesla Model S Rated 'Acceptable' in IIHS Crash Test, Tesla Lashes Back

34 points by valentinebm 9y ago

valentinebm 9y ago
>Rather than going back to the drawing board to improve the Model S's design, Tesla quickly responded saying IIHS has "motivation that suits their own subjective purposes."
- Pulcinella 9y ago
  I mean it's true. The purpose of IIHS's tests aren't to prop up the egos of car manufacturers.
- nxc18 9y ago
  Crooked IIHS wants to improve highway safety by making cars safer. How dare they? If I'm buying a $30,000 electric car, I demand my car be at least as dangerous as the least safe ICE cars. What good is a car if you can't get some hospital time, am I right?
chrismealy 9y ago
Model S is an old car. They need to design a new one.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 9y ago
Sometimes I see Tesla and it seems like 10% engineering and 90% BS and Elon Musk reality distortion aura a la Steve Jobs.
- brianwawok 9y ago
  That is Apple. Tesla is landing rockets on little boats. Apple is adding little color icons where F1-F12 used to be.
  - SEJeff 9y ago
    SpaceX is landing rockets (14 story first stages of Falcon 9 rockets to be specific), on massive Automated Drone Ships roughly the size of football fields, but sure, little boats works too :)
  - bluejekyll 9y ago
    I think you're grossly undervaluing the impact Apple has had in computing over the years. The iPhone is an engineering accomplishment, which has served to remake the way that people interact with each other. The comparison of Apple and Tesla/SpaceX in terms of what they produce is practically apples and oranges. I don't get why people are so quick to dismiss the accomplishments of Apple; there've been numerous technologies that they backed, which are now critical to computing today. LLVM for example (yes, technically came out of a phd), this has been huge for the computing industry as a whole... I know it's not a rocket, but the software that runs and uses the satellites is just as important as launching the satellites (and no, I have no idea if any satellites use LLVM for any compilation).
    - rxhernandez 9y ago
      For me at least, you're grossly overvaluing how much of an engineering accomplishment the iPhone was. I had windows mobile phones for at least a couple years before the iPhone came out and those phones had basic functionality that the iPhone was plain missing for years like mms and copy/paste.
      - tinus_hn 9y ago
        Yeah if only Bill Gates had had the same charisma as Steve Jobs, we would all be walking around with these fantastic fixed keyboard resistive touch models with user interfaces that require pens, instead of these boring multitouch slate smartphones.
      - anko 9y ago
        There is this common misunderstanding that technical people have when it comes to design. I think it's because a list of features makes it seem easy to "compare" two things fairly. It works especially well in the enterprise - if you're in that space you just add an MVP for every feature your competitors have, so when your clients are comparing products yours always seems like a better deal. The thing about design is, it's about tradeoffs. Good design is stripping things down to their most essential - working out what matters most. It's having courage to say no before something is ready. I would argue that copy/paste was added to iphone prematurely - it only became good when force (3d) touch was introduced. This stuff has been argued to death because people dislike apple's decisions. Like them or not, the iPhone changed the industry and set the bar for the competition. If a windows phone was so compelling, everyone would have had one! If MMS was so important then why don't we all have nokias? The proof is in the market! that stuff doesn't matter as much as having an easy to use interface, which was partly multi touch, but also a heck of a lot of engineering.
- aaron-lebo 9y ago
  Isn't part of Musk's genius his ability as a bullshit artist? He is a brilliant engineer and visionary, but take away his showmanship and he's just another balding engineer. Doesn't mean his showmanship isn't impressive. Just like Jobs.
  - darawk 9y ago
    That's not really fair to Musk. The man has created a string of extraordinary companies. He has done objectively impressive things on a scale and with a frequency that is objectively highly unusual. He is a showman, and to some extent a bullshit artist. But to say he's "just another balding engineer", or even to say he's "just like Jobs" is to unfairly discredit him, imo.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - wvenable 9y ago
    > showmanship Have you seen Elon Musk give a keynote? The man is no Steve Jobs. He should actually spend a little more time working on his showmanship.
    - aaron-lebo 9y ago
      Yeah but what is this other than brilliant self-marketing? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mh45igK4Esw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mh45igK4Esw He's a really really good marketer. No disrespect in recognizing that.
  - prawn 9y ago
    Outside of your assessment of engineering, vision and showmanship, you're ignoring the fact that he's leading some seriously ambitious and successful projects. "he's just another balding engineer" You say that like you're trying to knock him down a peg, like he reads HN comments and cares. Is that really necessary for any argument?
- bane 9y ago
  Only Musk's reality distortion field seems to be actually distorting reality.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
andrepd 9y ago
>Tesla quickly responded saying IIHS has "motivation that suits their own subjective purposes." >It's also worth noting, the Tesla Model X did very well in the same crash test—and Tesla was quick to brag about that vehicle's IIHS safety rating. Now, which is it then?
- andrewguenther 9y ago
  It doesn't appear like the Model X has gone through an IIHS test. I can't find any references to one and the link in the article actually goes to the Model S IIHS page...
concinds 9y ago
Tesla might well be in the wrong, but the article is frankly written in a biased way. > Rather than going back to the drawing board to improve the Model S's design What is Tesla is right, and the test is inadequate? Ultimately the only thing that matters is for the car to be safe on the road, and passing IYI-designed tests may or may not approximate that well enough. > Tesla then continued on saying the most accurate crash test is done by the Why not quote the full Tesla statement? We're left thinking that Tesla has reasons for disagreeing with this test, but the reasons are conveniently omitted. The whole article literally only quotes seven words written by Tesla themselves. >Tesla quickly responded saying IIHS has "motivation that suits their own subjective purposes." [...] Still, IIHS wasn't bashing Tesla in the least as they rated the Model S as "Good" in the moderate overlap front, side, roof strength and head restraint & seats test. This last sentence is blatantly dishonest. A test result being good has no bearing on whether the test is fair. I feel like this bias could only be conscious and deliberate, with the author hoping that people won't be critical/skeptical enough readers for it to work. This is disgraceful "journalism".
- andrewguenther 9y ago
  There isn't even a single source link in the entire article (except to the IIHS page for the safety rating) Further, they talk about how Tesla bragged about the Model X's IIHS rating, but the Model X has never undergone an IIHS crash test. Totally agree, pitiful journalism.
thsowers 9y ago
Full statement from Tesla given to cnbc[0] > Tesla's Model S received the highest rating in IIHS's crash testing in every category except for one, the small overlap front crash test, where it received the second highest rating available. While IIHS and dozens of other private industry groups around the world have methods and motivations that suit their own subjective purposes, the most objective and accurate independent testing of vehicle safety is currently done by the U.S. government, which found Model S and Model X to be the two cars with the lowest probability of injury of any cars that it has ever tested, making them the safest cars in history. [0] http://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/06/insurance-institute-for-highway-safety-tests-tesla-model-s.html http://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/06/insurance-institute-for-highw... (Autoplay video)
- dingaling 9y ago
  "the most objective and accurate independent testing of vehicle safety is currently done by the U.S. government" I think EuroNCAP would object to that statement, given the list of their members: https://www.euroncap.com/en/about-euro-ncap/members-and-test-facilities/list-of-euro-ncap-members-and-test-facilities/ https://www.euroncap.com/en/about-euro-ncap/members-and-test... NCAP results for 2015 test of Tesla Model-S, 82% overall. Pedestrian safety let it down badly: https://www.euroncap.com/en/results/tesla/model-s/7897 https://www.euroncap.com/en/results/tesla/model-s/7897 Compares interestingly to 2013 test of Maserati Ghibli, similar shape to Model S: https://www.euroncap.com/en/results/maserati/ghibli/8874 https://www.euroncap.com/en/results/maserati/ghibli/8874
Pulcinella 9y ago
Video of the test in question. https://youtu.be/fMcuiFmIQTo https://youtu.be/fMcuiFmIQTo Edit: If you go to the IIHS website and click on the pictures for the small overlap crash, it explains their reasoning for the rating. http://www.iihs.org/iihs/ratings/vehicle/v/tesla/model-s-4-door-hatchback http://www.iihs.org/iihs/ratings/vehicle/v/tesla/model-s-4-d... Double edit: Or I guess you can just go to the actual report for the test from the left side bar...
- alanning 9y ago
  The de-acceleration between 0:10 and 0:12 is really incredible. To my eye, constant and smooth, with a hard stop once the passenger section is reached. What crumple zones are designed for, I guess, but I've never seen a better example. Thanks for sharing the video!
- invisible 9y ago
  A "good" rating video: https://youtu.be/5Ja3UCuvNLc https://youtu.be/5Ja3UCuvNLc http://www.iihs.org/iihs/ratings/vehicle/v/mercedes-benz/e-class-4-door-sedan/2016 http://www.iihs.org/iihs/ratings/vehicle/v/mercedes-benz/e-c... After looking through the report, it looks like it's a bit unfair that they did two tests and reported the worst outcome of both (versus this usually just being one test). It seems the structural bit lost its rating from this format. The HIC-15 value for the head was 3x higher on the Tesla but is still fairly safe. Edit: Found the tab for data
- yread 9y ago
  > the left front wheel shattered during the crash, and the brake rotor and caliper assembly split the hinge pillar and penetrated the occupant compartment. Upper interior intrusion measured 2 cm at the hinge pillar and 9-12 cm at the instrument panel. > a high head acceleration occurred when the dummy's head hit the steering wheel through the airbag, indicating that head injuries would be possible >the dummy’s head contacted the frontal airbag but started to move off the left side because the seat belt allowed excessive forward excursion of the head and torso Seems fair to give second best rating. Also note the IIHS uses stricter tests for vehicles manufactures since January 2017
gumby 9y ago
The small overlap is a relatively recent introduction to the testing regime, about five years old. If you think of cars reflecting test-driven development; they all were tested and rated on head-on collisions, but people noticed that you often, perhaps most often, don't hit head on, but try to evade or simply drift into oncoming traffic. So cars were designed to test well on what turns out to be the less common case! And people who buy cars by safety ratings were also unwittingly optimizing for the wrong case. And the test has been a shock: my car, a mini, was rated very highly in front collision safety, but the first time it received the small overlap test it performed very poorly. (Luckily my wife's Mercedes did much better). When the test was first run in 2012, I believe no cars did particularly well. The current results reflect redesign to reflect this new test (it's not like it emerged from a vacuum -- car companies knew it was coming and were involved in designing the test). I would have thought Tesla would also have taken this test into account as the Model S was introduced in 2012. And even reading the article I thought so too until I read the statement on Tesla's web site. It reads to me that they they didn't take the test into account. I hope that is just poor wording on their part.
jedimastert 9y ago
I guess the better question is, don't they have the data, results, and guidelines to look at? This might seem like a silly question, but how does the IIHS make it's results?

34 points by valentinebm 9y ago

>Rather than going back to the drawing board to improve the Model S's design, Tesla quickly responded saying IIHS has "motivation that suits their own subjective purposes."

Pulcinella 9y ago
I mean it's true. The purpose of IIHS's tests aren't to prop up the egos of car manufacturers.
nxc18 9y ago
Crooked IIHS wants to improve highway safety by making cars safer. How dare they? If I'm buying a $30,000 electric car, I demand my car be at least as dangerous as the least safe ICE cars. What good is a car if you can't get some hospital time, am I right?

chrismealy 9y ago

Model S is an old car. They need to design a new one.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 9y ago

Sometimes I see Tesla and it seems like 10% engineering and 90% BS and Elon Musk reality distortion aura a la Steve Jobs.

brianwawok 9y ago
That is Apple. Tesla is landing rockets on little boats. Apple is adding little color icons where F1-F12 used to be.
- SEJeff 9y ago
  SpaceX is landing rockets (14 story first stages of Falcon 9 rockets to be specific), on massive Automated Drone Ships roughly the size of football fields, but sure, little boats works too :)
- bluejekyll 9y ago
  I think you're grossly undervaluing the impact Apple has had in computing over the years. The iPhone is an engineering accomplishment, which has served to remake the way that people interact with each other. The comparison of Apple and Tesla/SpaceX in terms of what they produce is practically apples and oranges. I don't get why people are so quick to dismiss the accomplishments of Apple; there've been numerous technologies that they backed, which are now critical to computing today. LLVM for example (yes, technically came out of a phd), this has been huge for the computing industry as a whole... I know it's not a rocket, but the software that runs and uses the satellites is just as important as launching the satellites (and no, I have no idea if any satellites use LLVM for any compilation).
  - rxhernandez 9y ago
    For me at least, you're grossly overvaluing how much of an engineering accomplishment the iPhone was. I had windows mobile phones for at least a couple years before the iPhone came out and those phones had basic functionality that the iPhone was plain missing for years like mms and copy/paste.
    - tinus_hn 9y ago
      Yeah if only Bill Gates had had the same charisma as Steve Jobs, we would all be walking around with these fantastic fixed keyboard resistive touch models with user interfaces that require pens, instead of these boring multitouch slate smartphones.
    - anko 9y ago
      There is this common misunderstanding that technical people have when it comes to design. I think it's because a list of features makes it seem easy to "compare" two things fairly. It works especially well in the enterprise - if you're in that space you just add an MVP for every feature your competitors have, so when your clients are comparing products yours always seems like a better deal. The thing about design is, it's about tradeoffs. Good design is stripping things down to their most essential - working out what matters most. It's having courage to say no before something is ready. I would argue that copy/paste was added to iphone prematurely - it only became good when force (3d) touch was introduced. This stuff has been argued to death because people dislike apple's decisions. Like them or not, the iPhone changed the industry and set the bar for the competition. If a windows phone was so compelling, everyone would have had one! If MMS was so important then why don't we all have nokias? The proof is in the market! that stuff doesn't matter as much as having an easy to use interface, which was partly multi touch, but also a heck of a lot of engineering.
aaron-lebo 9y ago
Isn't part of Musk's genius his ability as a bullshit artist? He is a brilliant engineer and visionary, but take away his showmanship and he's just another balding engineer. Doesn't mean his showmanship isn't impressive. Just like Jobs.
- darawk 9y ago
  That's not really fair to Musk. The man has created a string of extraordinary companies. He has done objectively impressive things on a scale and with a frequency that is objectively highly unusual. He is a showman, and to some extent a bullshit artist. But to say he's "just another balding engineer", or even to say he's "just like Jobs" is to unfairly discredit him, imo.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- wvenable 9y ago
  > showmanship Have you seen Elon Musk give a keynote? The man is no Steve Jobs. He should actually spend a little more time working on his showmanship.
  - aaron-lebo 9y ago
    Yeah but what is this other than brilliant self-marketing? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mh45igK4Esw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mh45igK4Esw He's a really really good marketer. No disrespect in recognizing that.
- prawn 9y ago
  Outside of your assessment of engineering, vision and showmanship, you're ignoring the fact that he's leading some seriously ambitious and successful projects. "he's just another balding engineer" You say that like you're trying to knock him down a peg, like he reads HN comments and cares. Is that really necessary for any argument?
bane 9y ago
Only Musk's reality distortion field seems to be actually distorting reality.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

andrepd 9y ago

>Tesla quickly responded saying IIHS has "motivation that suits their own subjective purposes." >It's also worth noting, the Tesla Model X did very well in the same crash test—and Tesla was quick to brag about that vehicle's IIHS safety rating. Now, which is it then?

andrewguenther 9y ago
It doesn't appear like the Model X has gone through an IIHS test. I can't find any references to one and the link in the article actually goes to the Model S IIHS page...

concinds 9y ago

Tesla might well be in the wrong, but the article is frankly written in a biased way. > Rather than going back to the drawing board to improve the Model S's design What is Tesla is right, and the test is inadequate? Ultimately the only thing that matters is for the car to be safe on the road, and passing IYI-designed tests may or may not approximate that well enough. > Tesla then continued on saying the most accurate crash test is done by the Why not quote the full Tesla statement? We're left thinking that Tesla has reasons for disagreeing with this test, but the reasons are conveniently omitted. The whole article literally only quotes seven words written by Tesla themselves. >Tesla quickly responded saying IIHS has "motivation that suits their own subjective purposes." [...] Still, IIHS wasn't bashing Tesla in the least as they rated the Model S as "Good" in the moderate overlap front, side, roof strength and head restraint & seats test. This last sentence is blatantly dishonest. A test result being good has no bearing on whether the test is fair. I feel like this bias could only be conscious and deliberate, with the author hoping that people won't be critical/skeptical enough readers for it to work. This is disgraceful "journalism".

andrewguenther 9y ago
There isn't even a single source link in the entire article (except to the IIHS page for the safety rating) Further, they talk about how Tesla bragged about the Model X's IIHS rating, but the Model X has never undergone an IIHS crash test. Totally agree, pitiful journalism.

thsowers 9y ago

Full statement from Tesla given to cnbc[0] > Tesla's Model S received the highest rating in IIHS's crash testing in every category except for one, the small overlap front crash test, where it received the second highest rating available. While IIHS and dozens of other private industry groups around the world have methods and motivations that suit their own subjective purposes, the most objective and accurate independent testing of vehicle safety is currently done by the U.S. government, which found Model S and Model X to be the two cars with the lowest probability of injury of any cars that it has ever tested, making them the safest cars in history. [0] http://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/06/insurance-institute-for-highway-safety-tests-tesla-model-s.html http://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/06/insurance-institute-for-highw... (Autoplay video)

dingaling 9y ago
"the most objective and accurate independent testing of vehicle safety is currently done by the U.S. government" I think EuroNCAP would object to that statement, given the list of their members: https://www.euroncap.com/en/about-euro-ncap/members-and-test-facilities/list-of-euro-ncap-members-and-test-facilities/ https://www.euroncap.com/en/about-euro-ncap/members-and-test... NCAP results for 2015 test of Tesla Model-S, 82% overall. Pedestrian safety let it down badly: https://www.euroncap.com/en/results/tesla/model-s/7897 https://www.euroncap.com/en/results/tesla/model-s/7897 Compares interestingly to 2013 test of Maserati Ghibli, similar shape to Model S: https://www.euroncap.com/en/results/maserati/ghibli/8874 https://www.euroncap.com/en/results/maserati/ghibli/8874

Pulcinella 9y ago

Video of the test in question. https://youtu.be/fMcuiFmIQTo https://youtu.be/fMcuiFmIQTo Edit: If you go to the IIHS website and click on the pictures for the small overlap crash, it explains their reasoning for the rating. http://www.iihs.org/iihs/ratings/vehicle/v/tesla/model-s-4-door-hatchback http://www.iihs.org/iihs/ratings/vehicle/v/tesla/model-s-4-d... Double edit: Or I guess you can just go to the actual report for the test from the left side bar...

alanning 9y ago
The de-acceleration between 0:10 and 0:12 is really incredible. To my eye, constant and smooth, with a hard stop once the passenger section is reached. What crumple zones are designed for, I guess, but I've never seen a better example. Thanks for sharing the video!
invisible 9y ago
A "good" rating video: https://youtu.be/5Ja3UCuvNLc https://youtu.be/5Ja3UCuvNLc http://www.iihs.org/iihs/ratings/vehicle/v/mercedes-benz/e-class-4-door-sedan/2016 http://www.iihs.org/iihs/ratings/vehicle/v/mercedes-benz/e-c... After looking through the report, it looks like it's a bit unfair that they did two tests and reported the worst outcome of both (versus this usually just being one test). It seems the structural bit lost its rating from this format. The HIC-15 value for the head was 3x higher on the Tesla but is still fairly safe. Edit: Found the tab for data
yread 9y ago
> the left front wheel shattered during the crash, and the brake rotor and caliper assembly split the hinge pillar and penetrated the occupant compartment. Upper interior intrusion measured 2 cm at the hinge pillar and 9-12 cm at the instrument panel. > a high head acceleration occurred when the dummy's head hit the steering wheel through the airbag, indicating that head injuries would be possible >the dummy’s head contacted the frontal airbag but started to move off the left side because the seat belt allowed excessive forward excursion of the head and torso Seems fair to give second best rating. Also note the IIHS uses stricter tests for vehicles manufactures since January 2017

gumby 9y ago

The small overlap is a relatively recent introduction to the testing regime, about five years old. If you think of cars reflecting test-driven development; they all were tested and rated on head-on collisions, but people noticed that you often, perhaps most often, don't hit head on, but try to evade or simply drift into oncoming traffic. So cars were designed to test well on what turns out to be the less common case! And people who buy cars by safety ratings were also unwittingly optimizing for the wrong case. And the test has been a shock: my car, a mini, was rated very highly in front collision safety, but the first time it received the small overlap test it performed very poorly. (Luckily my wife's Mercedes did much better). When the test was first run in 2012, I believe no cars did particularly well. The current results reflect redesign to reflect this new test (it's not like it emerged from a vacuum -- car companies knew it was coming and were involved in designing the test). I would have thought Tesla would also have taken this test into account as the Model S was introduced in 2012. And even reading the article I thought so too until I read the statement on Tesla's web site. It reads to me that they they didn't take the test into account. I hope that is just poor wording on their part.

jedimastert 9y ago

I guess the better question is, don't they have the data, results, and guidelines to look at? This might seem like a silly question, but how does the IIHS make it's results?