- The first public crash test of the Tesla Cybertruck has been conducted by the NHTSA.
- The angular electric pickup scored a five-star safety rating, the highest possible.
- All the Tesla models tested by the NHTSA to date have scored five stars.
The Tesla Cybertruck finally has an official crash safety rating more than a year after deliveries began in Nov. 2023. The result is impressive: five stars overall and in almost all individual categories.
The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) crashed several 2024 Tesla Cybertrucks as part of the New Car Assessment Program (NCAP).
Let’s start with the frontal crash test, which simulates a head-on collision between two similar vehicles where the test vehicle crashes into a flat, rigid barrier at 35 miles per hour. In this test, the NHTSA awarded a five-star safety rating for the driver and a four-star rating for the passenger.
The report mentions that both the driver and passenger airbags deployed properly in this test, but that neither the passenger knee airbag nor the driver knee airbag deployed. Tesla confirmed that the knee airbags are designed to remain undeployed for this specific test.
In the side crash test, the Cybertruck received an overall safety score of five stars. This category is comprised of two individual tests which are then combined into a single big rating. There’s the side barrier test, which simulates an intersection collision between two vehicles, and the side pole test, which simulates a vehicle colliding into a fixed object like a tree or utility pole.
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In the side barrier test, a moving non-rigid barrier angled at 27 degrees is crashed into the driver’s side of the test vehicle at 38.5 mph. In the side pole test, the test vehicle is angled at 75 degrees and crashed into a rigid pole at 20 mph. In each of these individual tests, the Cybertruck received a five-star rating, both for the front seat and rear seat.
Finally, the Tesla Cybertruck received a four-star rating (out of a maximum of five stars) in the rollover resistance test, which measures the risk of rollover in a single-vehicle, loss-of-control scenario. The NHTSA noted that the Cybertruck did not tip during the dynamic test, but that there is a rollover risk of 12.4%.
The crash tests were performed late last year by Applus+ Idiada Karco Engineering in Adelanto, California. The NHTSA published the final reports of the crash tests on January 15.
To date, every Tesla vehicle tested by the NHTSA has received a five-star overall safety rating.
