In Tesla's Model S, a crash could still smack the driver's head against the steering wheel despite the electric car company's effort to fix the problem, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
The crash-test results compounded Tesla Inc.'s bad week. On Monday, the Elon Musk-led automaker said it was running into production snags with its luxury Model X and Model S electric cars. And early Wednesday, Volvo announced that starting in 2019, all its new cars would have an electric motor, a decision that heralds more competition for Tesla.
Tesla's stock closed at $308.83 Thursday, down 5.6 percent for the day and down more than 14 percent for the week.
In the small overlap front test _ which simulates the kind of crash in which the front driver's-side corner of the car hits another vehicle, a pole or a tree _ the safety belt in the Model S let the dummy's torso move too far forward, IIHS said Wednesday.
That movement let the dummy's head "strike the steering wheel hard through the airbag," it said.
This was the main reason the Model S received an "acceptable" rating for the small overlap front test. In all other crash-test categories, the Model S was rated "excellent." The car's headlights, however, received a "poor" rating for "inadequate" visibility on curves.
This same small overlap front test was conducted in January, and the Model S got the same rating that time, according to the IIHS. The nonprofit said Tesla made changes to the safety belt in Model S cars manufactured after January with the "intent of reducing the dummy's forward movement," but the changes didn't fix the problem.
Tesla pushed back against the report, assailing IIHS' credibility.
"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," said a Tesla spokesperson in an email.
Tesla's vehicles have scored well in tests conducted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, but IIHS has a different perspective.
"Our view is that to be considered a top-tier performer, a vehicle should earn the highest safety ratings across the board in IIHS tests as well as those conducted by the federal government," Russ Radar, senior vice president of IIHS communications, said in an email.
