Tesla Has Released Footage of Its Failed Attempt to Rollover the Model X
Tesla has released footage of their internal rollover testing for the Model X. The electric car company couldn’t get the car to flip even during extensive testing.
Tesla has released footage of the rollover test for its Model X – and just like they said it is impossible to flip. The video shows the car accelerating sideways before hitting a raised edge, the car goes some way to rolling over before righting itself on to its wheels.
Model X is the first and only SUV to achieve a NHTSA 5-Star safety rating in every category and subcategory, with the lowest probability of rollover and overall injury of any SUV pic.twitter.com/V0f8ljeIBp
— Tesla (@Tesla) May 20, 2018
It isn’t known the exact speeds of the test, but it looks like a pretty violent impact. Tesla’s Model X is officially the highest safety rated SUV with 5-star rating in every safety category.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration awarded the car a 5-star rating in every category and subcategory during its extensive testing last year. Watch this approved video of the crash tests to get the full impact of the results.
Tesla has boasted about the safety performance of the model X for some time, it described the 5-star rating on its blog: “Model X performs so much better in a crash than gas-powered SUVs because of its all-electric architecture and powertrain design. The rigid, fortified battery pack that powers Model X is mounted beneath the floor of the vehicle creating a center of gravity so low that Model X has the lowest rollover probability of any SUV on the road. No other SUV has ever come close to meeting and exceeding this rollover requirement.”
Rollover is a common safety problem for SUVs due to their general top-weighted design. Not only its battery pack in the middle makes the Model X very bottom heavy – the car also lacks an engine block in the front, which allows for the addition of a large crumple zone.
Tesla claims that owners of the Model X have a 93 percent probability of escaping safely from a crash without serious injury. Musk is often tweeting images of Tesla vehicles involved in crashes, where the occupants escaped serious injury.
However, Tesla vehicles have been involved in fatalities. In 2017 a Model S owner was killed when his car smashed into a semi-trailer. It was revealed later that the Model S was in autopilot mode prompting questions about the legitimacy of Tesla’s advanced driver assist system.
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The NHTSA later cleared Tesla of any involvement in the crash. On March 23 of this year, a Tesla Model X car crashed into a freeway divider, causing a fire and shutting down two lanes of Highway 101 near Mountain View, California.
The driver was fatally wounded in the accident. Tesla has denied all responsibility for the crash saying: “The crash happened on a clear day with several hundred feet of visibility ahead, which means that the only way for this accident to have occurred is if Mr. Huang was not paying attention to the road, despite the car providing multiple warnings to do so.”