P85D Safety Rating?

gpetti said:

I was showing my son a picture of the new P85D frunk and he pointed out that this change might have some effect on the safety behaviour of the car. This observation is based on the fact that the front crumple zone is smaller than it was and the front motor is now part of the area that could be impacted in a front impact. Presumably this car will ultimately undergo its own safety testing and may perform better in some ways but possibly worse in others?

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Most of the weight increase in the new D vehicles is the increased reinforcement in the front frame to deal with the reduce crumple zone. This is a huge reason why the idea of retrofitting AWD on existing vehicles is absurd.

Part of what made the RWD S so great in front collisions is that there was nothing up there to shove through the firewall, just a giant empty crumple zone. That's no longer the case with the D vehicles, but there's still a good bit of dead space up there. I wouldn't be worried about it, though the crash test results should be interesting. Maybe we'll finally get an IIHS test.

I do not think that front motor has appreciable impact on the frontal crash worthiness of Model S. As can be seen from the attached pictures front drive unit is located above and behind the fron axle - area that is located behind thick horizontal frame member which I marked with the red line. I am fairly confident that Model S body was designed with AWD layout in mind, including the additional weight. I do not believe that additional weight of "D" has anything to do with reinforcing of the structure - it is due to added drive unit. The body in white of the "D" is most likely identical to the RWD version.

The crush zone is in front of the thick horizontal bar that I've marked with red line. This area remains the same for both "D" and the RWD version.

breser said:

Most of the weight increase in the new D vehicles is the increased reinforcement in the front frame to deal with the reduce crumple zone. This is a huge reason why the idea of retrofitting AWD on existing vehicles is absurd.

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Source? I have to believe that most of the weight increase in the D is due to the additional motor and inverter.

techmaven said:

Source? I have to believe that most of the weight increase in the D is due to the additional motor and inverter.

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I'd have to go digging but recall it was someone who was at the D event that said this somewhere here on this forum.

Elon mentioned at the D unveiling that they beefed up the front intrusion beams to maintain the same crash worthiness given the reduced crumple zone.

In the video and photos from the event you can see those beams are bigger, thicker, and no longer double octogonal extrusions but instead rectangular beams.

Tesla also has the benefit of two years or real world crashes to analyze and respond to in this frontal redesign. I'm confident they will have done the right things here.