The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) has once again raised the bar for vehicle safety in 2024, introducing more rigorous criteria to evaluate the protection vehicles offer to occupants and pedestrians alike. Amidst these enhanced standards, the Tesla Model Y stands out as a recipient of the prestigious Top Safety Pick+ award, affirming its position as a leader in automotive safety, a position it has held for years, also claiming last year’s title.
Innovative Safety Features
The 2024 Tesla Model Y has demonstrated outstanding performance across various safety tests, excelling in crashworthiness and crash avoidance capabilities. The vehicle earned the highest possible rating, 'Good'’ in all tested categories, including small and moderate overlap front tests, side impact tests, roof strength, and head restraint tests. Notably, Model Y's performance in the small overlap front test was particularly commendable, showcasing effective airbag deployment, well-maintained survival space for the dummy, and a low risk of significant injuries.
The Model Y has advanced safety features significantly contributing to its top-tier rating. Among these, automatic emergency braking stands out, displaying superior pedestrian detection and avoidance capabilities under daylight and nighttime conditions. Additionally, the vehicle's LED projector headlights received high praise for their illumination quality, ensuring optimal visibility without causing glare to oncoming traffic. Lars Moravy, VP of Vehicle Engineering at Tesla, explains why the company’s vehicles are so safe.
Recognizing the importance of safety for passengers of all ages, the Tesla Model Y's LATCH system for child seat anchors was rated 'Acceptable.'’ This reflects the vehicle’s commitment to accommodating families and enhancing safety for younger passengers, highlighting the ease of use and accessibility of the anchors.
Absence of Model 3
While the Tesla Model Y has proudly secured its place among the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's (IIHS) Top Safety Pick+ awardees for 2024, the Model 3 was noticeably absent from this prestigious list. The reason behind this, as reported by Teslarati, sheds light on the stringent criteria set by IIHS and the potential for future inclusion of Model 3.
Historically, the Model 3 was honored with the Top Safety Pick+ award in 2020, 2021, and 2022 but was notably missing in 2023 and 2024. Joe Young of the IIHS explained to Teslarati the reason behind this absence: the Model 3 has yet to be evaluated in the institute's updated side crash test and lacks a rating in the updated moderate overlap crash test—both critical components of the award criteria for this year.
This lack of current evaluations means the IIHS cannot consider the Model 3 for either safety award at this time. However, it's not a definitive exclusion. The IIHS is open to recognizing the 2024 Model 3 later in the year as additional tests are completed and ratings are updated.
Tesla’s engineering focus on creating the safest vehicles in the world is evident, with an extremely low chance of roll-over and occupant injury, positioning the Model Y as the best-selling car globally and among the safest on the road.
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Tesla has added the Acceleration Boost option to the Tesla store for owners of the 2024 Model 3 Long Range - specifically owners in Australia and China. Acceleration Boost is an upgrade that provides a significant performance boost, drastically narrowing the performance gap between the Long Range and Performance versions of the same model.
This upgrade will likely become available in Europe, Canada, and the United States in the next few days as Tesla updates its shops globally.
Acceleration Boost
This new Acceleration Boost is retailing for $3,000 AUD, or approximately $2,000 USD. That’s the same price for current owners of older Model 3 or Model Y Long Range vehicles, which all have the option to purchase Acceleration Boost through the shop.
The boost provides improved 0-100km/h (0-60mph) performance, bumping the 2024 Model 3 LR from 4.4s to 3.8s. The 2024 Performance version comes in at a blazing fast 2.9 seconds, so while it isn’t equivalent to just buying a performance variant in the first place, it is still a noticeable and significant upgrade.
Performance variants also come with a different front fascia vent for cooling, performance drive units, sport seats, adaptive suspension, 20-inch wheels, and Track Mode V3. That’s a significant number of additional features in the $10,000 USD price difference between the Long Range and Performance versions.
Should You Buy It?
If you’ve purchased a Long Range model and are itching to go just that little bit faster at every red light, this is the upgrade for you. It previously came with the cost of slightly reducing vehicle range, but the Tesla store doesn’t make a note of reduced range this time around. The 2023 Model 3 and Model Y Long Range models had an efficiency loss of about 5% due to the additional always-available acceleration and cooling.
You could drive in Chill mode to mostly negate that efficiency loss, but what’s the fun in driving in Chill when you just got Acceleration Boost? Anyhow, the shop listing for the 2024 variant doesn’t include this detail, so it's possible Tesla may have worked some more engineering magic.
Overall, if you’ve got the $3,000 AUD burning a hole in your pocket, some Tesla referral credits sitting around, or just want to go faster, it's definitely an upgrade many users find valuable.
As December approaches, Tesla’s highly anticipated Holiday update draws closer. Each year, this eagerly awaited software release transforms Tesla vehicles with new features and festive flair. If you’re not familiar with Tesla’s holiday updates, take a look at what Tesla has launched in the Holiday update the past few years.
For this chapter in our series, we’re dreaming up ways Tesla could improve the charging experience and even add some additional safety features. So let’s take a look.
Destination State of Charge
Today, navigating to a destination is pretty straightforward on your Tesla. Your vehicle will automatically let you know when and where to charge, as well as for how long. However, you’ll likely arrive at your destination at a low state of charge.
Being able to set your destination state of charge would be an absolute game-changer for ease of road-tripping. After all, the best EV to road trip in is a Tesla due to the Supercharger network. It looks like Tesla may be listening. Last week, Tesla updated their app and hinted at such a feature coming to the Tesla app. A Christmas present, maybe?
Battery Precondition Options
While Tesla automatically preconditions your battery when needed for fast charging, there are various situations where manually preconditioning the battery would be beneficial.
Currently, there is no way to precondition for third-party chargers unless you “navigate” to a nearby Supercharger. If you need to navigate to a Supercharger that’s close by, the short distance between your location and the Supercharger will also not allow enough time to warm up the battery, causing slower charging times.
While we already mentioned Live Activities in the Tesla app wishlist, they’d be especially useful while Supercharging. Live Activities are useful for short-term information you want to monitor, especially if it changes often — which makes them perfect for Supercharging, especially if you want to avoid idle fees.
Vehicle-to-Load / Vehicle-to-Home Functionality
The Cybertruck introduced Tesla Power Share, Tesla’s name for Vehicle-to-Home functionality (V2H). V2H allows an EV to supply power directly to a home. By leveraging the vehicle’s battery, V2H can provide backup power during outages and reduce energy costs by using stored energy during peak rates.
Tesla Power Share integrates seamlessly with Tesla Energy products and the Tesla app. We’d love to see this functionality across the entire Tesla lineup. Recently a third party demonstrated that bidirectional charging does work on current Tesla vehicles – namely on a 2022 Model Y.
Adaptive Headlights for North America
While Europe and China have had access to the Adaptive Headlights since earlier this year, North America is still waiting. The good news is that Lars Moravy, VP of Vehicle Engineering, said that these are on their way soon.
Blind Spot Indication with Ambient Lighting
Both the 2024 Highland Model 3 Refresh and the Cybertruck already have ambient lighting features, but they don’t currently offer a practical purpose besides some eye candy. So why not integrate that ambient lighting into the Blindspot Warning system so that the left or right side of the vehicle lights up when there’s a vehicle in your blind spot? Currently, only a simple red dot lights up in the front speaker grill, and the on-screen camera will also appear with a red border when signaling.
Having the ambient lighting change colors when a vehicle is in your blind spot would be a cool use of the technology, especially since the Model Y Juniper Refresh and Models S and X are supposed to get ambient lighting as well.
Tesla’s Holiday update is expected to arrive with update 2024.44.25 in just a few short weeks. We’ll have extensive coverage of its features when it finally arrives, but in the meantime, be sure to check out our other wishlist articles:
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