5 for the 3 Ain't Bad: Tesla Model 3 Gets 5-Star Crash Rating

The Tesla Model 3 earned top marks in government crash tests, with sterling ratings from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration across every category it tested. That’s for the sedan’s 2018 model year, a designation that aligns with the date of manufacture for Tesla models; the automaker prints that date on window stickers.

Related: How Do Car Seats Fit in a 2018 Tesla Model 3?

The new electric sports sedan, which Tesla began delivering to owners in the second half of 2017, earned the maximum rating of five stars in every category, including a rollover-resistance evaluation and NHTSA’s side-impact pole test. So strong were the results that Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted Thursday that once the agency posts final statistics, the “Model 3 has a shot at being [the] safest car ever tested.”

A Tesla spokesperson said the automaker didn’t have anything else to add “at the moment.” Asked for comment, spokespeople for NHTSA did not immediately respond to Cars.com.

NHTSA’s results apply to the rear-wheel-drive Model 3. All-wheel-drive versions have five stars in NHTSA’s side-impact tests, but no published frontal-impact scores as of this writing. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, NHTSA’s private-industry counterpart, gave top marks to the 2018 Model 3’s automatic braking technology — a feature documented but not measured by NHTSA — but has no crash-test ratings otherwise. In August, IIHS noted mixed results when it tested several self-driving systems, including the Model 3’s Autopilot. Neither IIHS nor NHTSA has published crash-test scores for the 2017 Model 3.

Some variants of the Model S hatchback and Model X SUV have five-star NHTSA ratings, while others have no published results. The Model S has mixed ratings from IIHS; the Model X isn’t rated.

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