Peen measuring contest on city street goes bad

C'mon, children absorb impacts better than almost any naturally occurring substance on Earth. They are nature's crumple zone.

Appleseed said:

C'mon, children absorb impacts better than almost any naturally occurring substance on Earth. They are nature's crumple zone.

And they're a renewable resource!

1988RedT2 said:

Mndsm said:

I was impressed by the overall structural integrity of the Tesla. For a 100mph hit, it's in good shape. 

O Rly?  Which piece?

The front half where the driver was. 

bcp2011 said:

pinchvalve said:

For the damage it did, the front of the GT-R isnt too bad either.

To get a sense of the energy involved look at the roof and the fact that the energy transferred all the way to the rear quarter panel.  That's some serious impact.  

The entire C-pillar down into the rear quarter is rippled. What a mess...

I still think that anyone who thinks the Tesla should have taken that hit better is nuts. 

The rear doors might be part of the issue. The C pillar doesn't actually attach to anything at the top other than a strip of bodywork across the top of the window which is then attached to the narrow strip between the doors. 

There is some kind of joint at the floor that looks like it just came unzipped at a seam. Even the roof isn't twisted like I think it would be. It might have popped the spot welds too. It must have been the perfect hit to pop it apart like that. 

I would love to know how fast the GTR was moving when they hit. 

In reply to Duke :

I think it should have. With that little structure in the back of the car, what is there should have deformed more before it failed. Even more so if you expect people to sit in the rear of the car. 

That'll buff... no. 

Mndsm said:

I was impressed by the overall structural integrity of the Tesla. For a 100mph hit, it's in good shape. 

uh...it broke in half!  The GTR seems to have faired better than the model X.

I can't wait until the NHTSA requires the equivalent of a 100 mph GTR side hit on the rear axle. Teslas usually do pretty well on crash tests, but there are some situations that just aren't survivable. Look at the physics of the hit the Nissan took - it tore off a piece of the other car, shedding very little energy in the process because of the relative masses involved. That rear chunk of Tesla isn't very heavy compared to the GTR. It also also took the hit on the nose so all the crumple zones could do their thing and spread the shock down the entire length of the car, which is why we see damage far from the point of impact. There's no crumple zone on the side of the rear axle, so none of that energy from the hit was absorbed. Had the cars positions been reversed, I'll bet the GTR would have come apart as well.

If it was going 100 mph, that's about 1.8 MJ of energy. Dynamite packs 4.1 MJ/kg so this is almost exactly equal to a pound of TNT. Setting off a pound of dynamite in the back seat might not have worked out well either.

Hmm, which also works out to about 1/2 kWh according to Wikipedia. The Model X battery can be as big as 100 kWh. Which really puts the energy storage of this thing into perspective. I am also impressed that the EV didn't have some sort of, umm, thermal event after that level of destruction.

I'm hoping that GTR driver sees some jail time. He's a very lucky guy that he didn't kill someone.

The GTR absorbed much of the energy. The rear of the Tesla hit the red Mustang hard enough to put it on a wrecker as well, so it also absorbed a fair amount of energy. It doesn't look like the structure of the Tesla resisted coming apart as much as I would expect. Looking at other crashes where cars are torn in half, most of them show much more deforming of the body around the tear. What I can see of the Tesla, much of the damage was sustained by the back door and then the rear of the car separated. That wouldn't be an issue for me except the rear section that separated has seats in it so it should be part of the cabin structure, the strongest part of the car.

It could be as simple as how the GTR hit it. Like a wedge through a block of wood. I couldn't find a decent picture of both sides of the rear of the Tesla to see where it took the brunt of the force. 

I do find it interesting that there is no crash rating for a GTR. 

I too would like to know how fast the GTR was going. Not only did it rip the back of the Model X off, it seems to have ripped a fair bit of it's guts out of the floor too.. and the floor has the batteries and most of the support structure. I am going to say the GTR was going very much in excess of 100 mph to do that kind of damage and then travel that much further down the road through the median and it's vegetation.

Surprised at not seeing more battery guts on the tarmac or hanging out of the Tesla.  Where are the batteries located in this model?

Skateboard. Looks like it separated at the back of the battery. 

In reply to Toyman01 :

I didn't know the Model X had 3rd row seating.  It doesn't really seem big enough for them to be useable by anyone other than children.  But as mentioned, there gets to a point where some crashes just aren't survivable. I still say the Tesla did well in this crash. It was helped by the impact being towards the rear of the car.  Had it been more of a broadside hit or towards the front, the Tesla occupants probably wouldn't have been so fortunate.