The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) recently named Tesla’s Model Y a Top Safety Pick+, the organization’s highest level of recognition. This result comes after Model Y scored the highest possible ratings in all IIHS crashworthiness and front crash avoidance tests.
In May 2021, Model 3 and Model Y cars built for the North American market transitioned to Tesla Vision, the company’s camera vision and neural net processing system that delivers Autopilot, Full-Self Driving capability and certain active safety features. Beyond physical crash tests, IIHS places significant emphasis on crash avoidance technologies, which help reduce impact severity or prevent accidents from happening altogether. Following this transition, both Model Y and Model 3 received “superior” ratings in both vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-pedestrian crash-avoidance tests, the highest possible scores.
IIHS’ assessment program also focuses on three variations of offset frontal crash tests: moderate overlap, driver-side small overlap and passenger-side small overlap. Small-to-moderate overlap frontal crash tests are very common in head-on collisions, in which energy is focused on a smaller area of the car’s crash structure. Model Y’s large front and rear crash structures are designed to crumple more efficiently than traditional vehicles, optimizing the deceleration during a crash event to minimize occupant injury risk. In these crash tests, Model Y achieved the highest possible score in each occupant injury criteria. Additionally, assessment of the safety cell – the rigid structure that surrounds the passenger compartment – returned top ratings for crashworthiness in every test conducted.
According to Tesla, the Model Y benefits from the same structural architecture that make its other vehicles safe: energy-absorbing side sills that act as side-impact crumple zones, a fortified battery pack mounted low in the vehicle to reduce rollover risk, and a metal body structure that can withstand many times the car’s weight.
