Tesla Loses in Safety Test

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 12, 3:18PM EST · Published Feb 1, 6:35AM EST

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Tesla Loses in Safety Test — © Thinkstock

[cnxvideo id=”655240″ placement=”ros”]The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) has a series of tests that are the gold standard for the safety evaluation of cars sold in the United States. The organization flunked Tesla Motors Inc.’s (NASDAQ: TSLA) Model S in a measure of the best car safety. The results are a blow to Tesla’s claim that it builds the safest cars on the road.

The IIHS 2017 TOP SAFETY PICK+ selection, the top rating, involves crash ratings for “small overlap front,” moderate overlap front,” “side,” “roof strength,” “head restraints and seats,” “headlights” and “front crash prevention.” Each is meant to mirror the results of actual accidents that are common in car crashes. A “poor” designation is rare, but Tesla received it for of its headlights. It also received a less than perfect “acceptable” rating for “small overlap front” incidents.

The results are especially bad for Tesla’s image. It is not at all unusual for cars to the top “good” rating across all the measurement criteria. David Zuby, IIHS executive vice president and chief research officer, was particularly harsh:

There’s no reason the most efficient vehicles can’t also be among the safest. We hope Tesla and BMW will continue to refine the designs of their electric models to maximize driver protection and, especially in the case of Tesla, improve their headlights.

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Tests are conducted using crash dummies. Notably, the crash test of the Tesla S showed a seat belt flaw that allowed the dummy’s head to hit the steering wheel in a test.

Tesla says that the newest versions of the Model S may have corrected problems, but not in time to get in under the wire for the IIHS evaluation:

The ratings for the Model S apply to 2016 and 2017 cars built after October 2016. Tesla says it made a production change on Jan. 23 to address the head-contact problem, and IIHS will test the updated vehicle for small overlap protection as soon as it can be delivered.

In the meantime, Tesla has a challenge to face with new car shoppers.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.