At the end of May, Tesla held “T-talk” lectures on car safety in Beijing and Shanghai respectively, mainly to analyze the safety of domestically made Model 3 to the attending media.
We are no strangers to the safety of Model 3. It has achieved a 5-star safety rating from international rating agencies such as NHTSA and ENCAP. Before the brake gate in April, Model 3 can be said to be one of the safest electric cars on the planet.
However, it is the first time for Tesla to hold an event to publicly talk about the safety of Model 3.
Automotive safety is generally divided into active/passive safety. Active safety refers to the design that allows the vehicle to avoid collisions, and passive safety is the safety protection after the vehicle collision. Regarding Model 3, the reason why it has repeatedly won the highest scores from various rating agencies is that both the active and passive safety designs are very excellent.
Taking active safety as an example, AEB, Autopilot and other intelligent configurations, especially the Autopilot automatic driving assistance system that Tesla is proud of, are the main factors. Tesla has also released a data comparison: In the driving process with Autopilot automatic driving assistance, there is an average of one traffic accident for every 6.74 million kilometers traveled. However, according to data from the U.S. NHTSA, an average of one traffic safety accident occurs for every 780,000 kilometers in the U.S. road traffic.
Therefore, Tesla concluded that the Autopilot automatic driving assistance allows the level of driving safety to reach 8.66 times the average level in the United States. From the perspective of the development history of automotive safety, this can indeed be regarded as an outstanding achievement.
To better explain passive safety, Tesla specially pulled out a white body of Model 3, and the strength of each part can be seen from the various colors of the profiles, including A-pillars, B-pillars, sill beams, and chassis cross beams, all of which used over a megapascal of steel.
Tesla stated that some key collision parts of the Model 3 body have been strengthened, and the safety strength is better than that of similar models.Taking the reinforced A-pillar as an example, it can effectively reduce the amount of deformation of the door frame during offset collision, enabling Model 3 to achieve excellent results in the IIHS front 40% collision test.
Assessing the safety of a car through the ratings of various professional organizations is one aspect, and making the majority of consumers feel safe when using it is another, after all, a car is a durable consumer product, time is the best inspector.
Regarding the safety of the Model 3, after all, there are so many professional testing organizations endorsing it, and so many consumers purchasing it, it would be unfair to say that it is not safe.
Therefore, the safety issue of Model 3 that we are discussing now is actually a kind of disadvantage caused by the learning curve of its cutting-edge design, leading to the disadvantage of use.
Judging from my own experience of driving the Model 3 twice, its brakes are indeed harder compared to gasoline-powered cars or other electric vehicles, but whether it has become harder as usage increases is difficult to measure.
The reason why the brakes of Model 3 are hard is explained by the Tesla product manager I talked to during the event. He said that the energy recovery of Model 3 is mainly on the accelerator pedal, that is, the one-pedal mode, and the braking pedal also has energy recovery, but mainly for emergency situations, because most of the braking is absorbed by the accelerator.
From an engineering development perspective, there is no problem with the logic of the accelerator pedal and braking pedal of Model 3, which is a highly efficient and cutting-edge design for electric vehicles, this is very Tesla.
As for the one-pedal mode controlled by the accelerator pedal, the actual experience is quite good, perhaps the best one-pedal mode I have ever experienced.
As for the brake feel, it is indeed harder, which is related to its short stroke setting. The shorter the stroke, the greater the braking density. According to the product manager’s statement, the braking tuning of Model 3 is closely related to racing, and he also said that this is why Model 3 can go straight to the track.
Regarding the product manager’s definition of Model 3’s racing attributes, I did not refute it. Because from the research on Tesla’s products by new forces such as XPeng, Tesla’s racing attributes are the direction they are learning.
Therefore, in general, whether Model 3 has any safety issues is not difficult to answer. As the world’s best-selling electric vehicle, the market has already proven the safety of Model 3.
However, this incident is enough to draw Tesla’s attention, and while the market is booming, it also needs to build up soft culture and system enhancements such as consumer test drive training, after-sales service, etc. after all, the impact of this incident is indeed quite significant.
According to media reports, in March, Tesla’s orders in China were 21,000, which remained at 18,000 in April, but fell to 9,000 in May. This shows that the impact of the brake incident is still fermenting.Back to the event itself, in such a critical moment, Tesla held a safety workshop with a clear intention – to regain consumer confidence and recapture the market by emphasizing safety.
In the eyes of “Electric Power”, the impact of the short-term braking issue will continue, but in the long run, Tesla, with its leading product strength, will make a comeback. By then, Tesla’s marketing system will be even more sophisticated.
This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.