- Tesla's Model 3 was recently named
the safest car in the U.S.
But, what does that even mean?
Specifically, what goes into determining
a car's level of safety?
Today, on Bumper to Bumper,
we're gonna take a look at how vehicles are crash tested.
What kind of clever engineering
goes into keeping you safe during a crash,
and how the Tesla Model 3 blew away the competition.
Buckle up, my science loving pals,
we're about to watch a whole lot of car crashes.
(funky upbeat music)
Thank you to our friends at eBay Motors
for sponsoring today's episode of Bumper to Bumper.
All of us here at Donut, we go through a lot of cars.
Not a day goes by where one of us isn't like,
"I could probably sell my F-150 and get a Raptor,
but there's just too much freaking work.
Well now, thanks to eBay Motors,
the search for cars and selling of cars
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They provide all the tools that make it easy to buy
and sell cars online.
Tools like VPP, make it so there's no funny business
when you're buying or selling your cars.
You wanna know what's even cooler,
our very own James Pumphrey and Nolan Sykes
have partnered with eBay
to judge a first of its kind competition.
(bell dings) (audience cheering)
- Congratulations.
- (sobbing) It's so beautiful.
- eBay Motors wants to see what cars you guys have to sell,
and James and Nolan will be judging their favorites
from the bunch.
Click the link in the description,
download the eBay Motors App, upload some pics of the car,
write up a fancy little description.
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You're entered into the competition.
- That is right.
We will be judging the competition,
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from September 7th to the 30th.
And best of all,
the winner will get $1,000 gift card, eBay
and second place will get a $500 gift card.
- And the prize we are most excited about
is the last place prize.
We'll be picking the worst car listed,
and that winner--
- Or loser.
- Will also win a $500 gift card to eBay.
- So what are you waiting for?
The competition is live now and runs until September 30th.
Go list those cars you got sitting around.
Maybe you'll win, maybe you'll lose.
We can't wait to see what's out there.
Now, Jerry, back to the show.
The Tesla Model 3
received the highest ever crash test rating
from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration,
as well as the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
While the NHTSA is a government organization,
the IIHS is a nonprofit organization
that's funded and backed
pretty much by every insurance company
that you can probably think of.
Both organizations test vehicles
in a multitude of different crash scenarios.
But for the sake of simplicity,
we're going to focus primarily on the IIHS.
These days there are two types of safety measurements
that they analyze,
which are passive safety, and active safety.
Passive safety has to do with how the car reacts
in an event of a collision,
and active safety is what you see in all the commercials
that companies are putting out.
And we'll get into active safety
when we start talking about the Model 3 in a bit,
but for passive safety,
the IIHS has said six main categories for testing
the crash worthiness of a vehicle.
And they include three different kinds of front/end impacts,
side impact, whiplash, which is a seat and seat belt test,
and roof strength.
The IIHS painstakingly monitors an insane amount of data
and impact results for every single crash
that happens inside their labs.
And they test crashes
anywhere between 12 and 40 miles per hour.
And after the crash they're given a rating.
There're four ratings, there's poor, there's marginal,
there's acceptable, and there's good,
with good being the best that your car can get.
Oh, you wanna be great,
well, too bad,
'cause the best you can be is good.
And they use a warehouse
full of computers during these tests,
but the actual devices
are just a variation of two different kinds of devices,
accelerometers and load cells.
Accelerometers measure acceleration forces,
the change in velocity of an object.
But with regards to the IIHS,
they measure how quickly an object stops moving,
meaning the duration of an impact.
And your phone probably has a bunch of them in it.
It knows you pick it up,
that you picked it up,
'cause it's got it accelerometer in there.
Knows it when you from zero, to some other speed.
Now for the IIHS, duration of impact
is a really important measurement of safety,
because the longer time and impact takes,
the more energy gets absorbed,
and the less energy gets transferred to the driver
and the passengers.
(bright upbeat music)
A good example of this
is if we take a look at crashes in motor sports.
Now, crash where a car smacks into a wall,
comes to immediate stop.
And that's a really bad crash
because when the car smacks the wall,
it's taking all that kinetic energy, and it's going to zero,
and it's going to zero very, very quickly.
Now the other hand,
a really scary type of crash that you might think of
is when a car is tumbling.
But in fact,
it's actually dispersing all those forces,
and extending the amount of time,
which means that you as the passenger,
or the driver itself, is getting low forces acted upon them,
and is actually safer.
You wanna try to disperse that energy
over a longer period of time.
So, that's all the stuff that accelerometers test.
Now, what about load cells?
Load cells measure the amount of force
that's exerted on them.
Basically, they're kind of like really high strength scales.
And in fact, if you have a scale at your home,
you probably have a load cell,
or a number of load cells inside of it.
Very simply, they take any force exerted on them
and they convert it into a value that's quantifiable,
and that makes sense to us in everyday life.
Like pounds, if you live in America,
or kg, if you live in anywhere else in the world.
So those are the basics of the kinds of devices
that are used to measure force.
But where the heck do they put them?
Well, a lot of them are actually put on the car themselves,
but a number of them go into something
called an anthropomorphic testing device,
much more commonly known as a crash test dummy.
♪ We are the dummies ♪
♪ Crushing onto you ♪
♪ Busting our heads ♪
♪ Just for you ♪
- Inside one single dummy,
there can be as many as 100
individual measurement devices, that are recording precisely
how that dummy reacts to a crash.
And there are all different kinds of dummies.
They even have little baby ones called CRABIs,
which is spelled C-R-A-B-I,
which stands for Child Restraint Airbag Interaction.
And they are creepy.
They should be called CREEPI's,
which stands for
Crashes Really Effect Everyone's Physical Inertia.
Listen, I'm not very good at acronyms, or jokes apparently,
so, what do you think CREEPI should stand for?
Why don't you put your best acronym in the comments?
Keep it PG 13,
'cause I'm a cool substitute teacher.
Fun little side note about crash test dummies.
There was a guy in the forties and fifties
named Colonel John Stapp
that was doing aeronautical safety testing for pilots.
And the data used back then is still the baseline
by which all crash test dummies are measured and calibrated.
At one point, Colonel Stapp rocketed himself
to 632 miles an hour,
and then from that speed,
came to a dead stop in 1.4 seconds enduring 43 G'S,
and the dude survived.
What the (beep).
So, let's talk about the Tesla Model 3,
which received the highest ever ratings
from the IIHS and the NHTSA essay.
How in the heck did a car company that's younger
than most of my T-shirts, jump to the front of the line
in automotive crash test safety.
Well, it starts with the fact that the car
doesn't have an engine.
(funky upbeat music)
Crumple zone is where the engine sits
in a conventional front-engine vehicle.
Now with the combustion engine in there,
there's less empty space to absorb any impact.
The combustion engine is totally rigid,
so there's really no energy absorption
that happens from the actual engine,
in a front (indistinct) collision.
The crumple zone is all the space around the engine.
And with the Model 3,
there's basically nothing but air in the front of the car,
or your luggage,
which I'm guessing, is probably a little bit softer
than a freaking engine.
Anyways, that space provides a whole lot more space
for the impact to be absorbed.
So remember when we talked about impact time,
well, this was the first step in how Tesla
got it's world class safety rating.
So there's no combustion engine in the Model 3,
which gives a whole lot of space
for an impact to be absorbed.
Likewise, because there's no gas tank,
the same principle applies to the rear of the car.
No container, boom, boom, boom juice,
means that you don't need a bunch of rigid structures
to protect the container,
which ultimately means that you can dedicate that space
to absorbing any sort of unforeseen impact.
So the crumple zones on a car do a whole lot
to try to absorb that energy from a crash,
but they can't do it all.
And eventually the energy from the car crash
is going to make its way past the crumple zone.
Well, the Tesla model 3 is prepped and ready to handle it
because of how Tesla builds out the frame of the car.
Starting with those A-pillars that we mentioned
just a little bit ago.
If you take a look at a Model 3's A-pillar.
It is actually really, really thick.
Like, 11 Cs thick,
and that's just the start of the model 3's cabin structure.
And a car's cabin structure is made up of the floorpan,
the roof, the A-pillars, the B-pillars,
the C-pillars and the rails.
Now in the Model 3,
the A-pillars, the B-pillars and the rails are super robust.
But, Tesla also built in another cross member in the roof
that one, allows for two enormous moonroofs to be fitted.
And we'll get to those in a bit
because they're actually pretty amazing.
And two, it gives the entire car
additional rigidity and strength.
It's such a strong frame,
that the Model 3 can actually withstand up to four times
its own weight on the roof.
That's over 16,000 in pounds
just sitting on top of the car.
Now, roof strength with regards to the IIHS
is measured by strength to weight ratio,
meaning that the resistance in pounds
that the roof can take, its strength,
compared to the curb rate of the car,
that's its weight.
Now the Tesla Model 3 lands at a ratio of 5.847
To put this into perspective,
we'd like to think of the Ford F-150, my truck, I got one.
It's a pretty freaking sturdy and a strong vehicle.
Well, the F-150's strength to weight ratio is 5.851.
Only four 1000th better than the Model 3,
which is a mid-size family sedan.
And the IIHS rounds up to the nearest hundredth,
which means that these two vehicles,
the F-150 and the Tesla Model 3,
had the exact same score.
But let's compare it to some of its actual competitors.
The BMW 3 Series scored a 5.73.
The Honda Accord comes in at 5.51,
and the Volvo S3, synonymous with safety,
it comes in at 5.73.
Did I just blow your mind?
Rhetorical question.
I know I did.
Mind blown.
The Model 3 also utilizes clever engineering
around how they exactly manage all of the weight of the car.
Despite being Tesla's smallest car,
the Model 3 weighs between 3500 and 4100 pounds.
That's more than two tonnes, so it's a heavy, heavy board.
And we look at a couple of cars that I just mentioned,
the BMW 3 Series, that clocks in at 3,500 pounds,
and the Volvo S 60, it tips the scales at 3,900 pounds.
And in fact,
if we look at just the roof strength and weight,
the Model 3 is a lot closer to something
like in Ford F-150 than it is any car in its class.
The battery in the dual motor set up alone
weighs 1400 pounds.
But, all of that battery and motor weight
is positioned below the passengers,
giving the car a ridiculously low center of gravity.
And as a result,
a ridiculously low probability of being rolled over,
in the event of a side impact collision.
And this is characteristic of all Teslas,
even their Model X, their biggest model,
which is similar in size to a Range Rover, for example,
is very difficult to flip,
due to its super low center of gravity.
Probably you've seen the viral video
of these guys trying to flip a Tesla Model X,
and they don't do it.
And it would seem they're put in conditions
that would make it pretty easy to flip over.
If you did that in my car, I'd be rolling baby.
♪ Rolling rolling ♪
- So, the IIHS measures the probability
of a Model 3 rollover at 6% chance.
Now to put that in perspective,
the Chevy Camaro, it has an 11% chance of flipping over
in an accident.
So how about them apples?
Now the Model 3
also has a very low polar moment of inertia or PMI.
And PMI is a measure of how much force it takes
to rotate an object around its center of mass.
We actually went on a Jerry Bus Trip and talked about this.
I took a basketball and I took a broom pole
and they weigh about the same mass.
Well, taking a basketball
and getting it to rotate around its center of mass,
is pretty easy.
But when you have a broom pole
and the mass is located further away
from the center of mass,
it's really hard to get that thing to rotate.
That has a high polar moment of inertia
versus a basketball's low polar moment of inertia.
Now, because of the car's very low PMI,
the Model 3 will easily spin out in a collision.
Turning a lot of that linear energy into rotational energy,
thereby increasing the time of impact
and decreasing the amount of energy to the passengers.
Remember when we talked about Motorsport crashes earlier,
and while it looks a lot scarier,
it's usually a lot safer when you're rolling and tumbling,
because you're getting all of that energy out
in a longer period of time.
This is essentially what's happening
with a Tesla Model 3 when it gets hit and starts to spin.
The Model 3 actually has the lowest PMI
of any production vehicle currently available.
(funky upbeat music)
Now the Model 3,
much like a lot of Teslas has a glass roof.
Now this might seem like a point of weakness,
but Tesla saw this as an opportunity to get real clever
with their engineering.
The glass roof of Model 3 is made out of two pieces
of tempered automotive glass,
and it's bonded together by a layer of polyurethane.
Which is actually the same sort of material
that skate wheels are made out of.
Now this works in a really clever way
with regards to impact absorption,
because of how tempered glass actually works.
Let's talk about normal sheet metal roofs first.
Now, if an impact happens to,
let's say the side of the car,
and it's a big old truck that hits the side,
the roof be made out of sheet metal only really absorbs
the impact at the point of impact.
Now, sheet metal is pretty easy to bend and reshape,
which does help with absorption,
but when we compare it with Tesla's tempered glass roof,
there's really no contest.
The roof on the Model 3
is engineered to distribute any critical impact,
from any point of the roof,
throughout the entire roof itself.
So if we go back to our truck scenario,
we can now think of that truck impact being distributed
throughout the entire roof,
not just at a single point of impact.
And that's the nature of tempered glass.
So when tempered glass breaks,
the entire sheet of glass breaks,
not just where the impact occurred.
That's probably pretty expensive,
if you break your roof in your Tesla.
Now because it's distributed across entire plane,
it increases the time of impact
and absorbs much more of that energy.
And that works in tandem with the polyurethane bonding layer
to maintain an overall structure,
so that none or very little of the glass
from the roof of the car,
falls into the cabin during an accident.
Don't want glass falling on you.
Everything we've talked about so far is just in the event
of an accident, which is super important, obviously.
But the real shining star in the Model 3's trophy case
is the active safety features.
Now these days,
most modern cars come with active safety features.
I'm talking forward-collision sensors
and emergency braking that will stop the car.
Lane departure assist,
that will keep your car in its lane.
Blind spot detection sensors, et cetera, et cetera.
A lot of cars already have that.
Model 3 has all those as well,
but what really sets it apart from its competitors
is autopilot.
- [Male voice over radio] May I suggest you put the car
on the auto cruise mode for safety sake?
- No, you may not.
- Sit back, relax and let your robot on four wheels,
do all the driving for you.
'Cause you got Instagram posts to like and look at.
Tesla has been testing and developing its autopilot system
for years now,
which has put it leaps and bounds ahead of other auto makers
in terms of how it measures, analyzes, and applies the data
that the car's receiving from its multitude of sensors.
Yes, their main goal with autopilot is obviously
to build a system that allows the car to drive itself.
But, even if you're not actively using the autopilot system
to autonomously drive the car,
the pilot, he didn't check out man,
he's still there chilling with you.
And it's like an extra set of eyes, and brakes,
and steering wheel, helping to keep you from crashing.
The system on these cars is so advanced
that using it's front-facing radar system,
it can actually bounce radar waves
underneath the car directly in front of you,
to detect the car in front of it.
And it can detect the differences
between both of their velocities,
if they're going to collide or not.
Sometimes before they even collide,
enabling it to auto brake before the accident even happens.
There's a really great video of this happening.
This is with the Model S, but the, 3,
has the same technology.
You can hear it alarm, and see the car break
before the cars ahead of it even crash.
They're like a crystal ball reader,
that's actually able to read the crystal ball and tell you.
It's not hocus-pocus.
Okay. Okay. All right.
But what about the batteries?
A few years ago, it seemed like every other day,
you'd catch a news story about Teslas catching on fire.
And frankly,
I think a lot of this is blown out of proportion
by the media.
Good old fashioned gas cars gets on fire every day,
but it doesn't make the news cycle
because it's not a new, scary form of technology.
From 2012 to 2019,
there had been one Tesla catch on fire
for every 175 million miles driven.
Now to put that in perspective, in the U S alone,
there's a vehicle fire every 19 million miles driven.
That's data.
So, all of these things combined,
the Model 3 takes home an easy W from the IIHS
and the NHTS as their top safety pick.
It's not great, it's not fantastic,
it's the top, which is good.
Also, just in case you were wondering,
the second safest car is actually the Tesla Model S.
Elon Musk is a crazy dude.
He is extremely smart,
but sometimes he's got a little Kanye West in him.
What do you guys think about Elon Musk?
Lemme know in the comments,
follow us on Donut at Donut Media.
Follow me at Jeremiah Burton.
'Till next week.