Tesla is Shooting for Toyota's Title as Safety Champion

In the recent Tesla earnings call, the electric vehicle automaker leaned into its saftey message as the company continues on its quest for profitable quarters. For this call, Tesla enlisted Elon Musk and Madan Gopal, functional lead and principal safety engineer, at Tesla, to discuss recent milestones. 

“Tesla came up with the lowest probability of injury metric, which is part of the new U.S. Car Assessment Program (NCAP) rating,” said Gopal. “The Model 3 has the lowest probability of injury and there are a total of 900 plus vehicles since 2011 that have been rated.”

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's (NHTSA) New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) created the 5-Star Safety Ratings Program to provide consumers with information about the crash protection and rollover safety of new vehicles beyond what is required by Federal law.

Besides the new safety ratings, Tesla is rolling out the promise of its Autopilot (Full Self Driving) technology to decrease accidents and lay the groundwork for the king of safety crown in the the 21st-century. The theme was loud and clear on the call with team Tesla.

Musk alluded "to the gaming of safety tests by carmakers for specific car impact areas so that automakers can achieve better ratings." Musk referred to Tesla’s approach as holistic, system design approach versus current automakers "show strength in where they know the test will happen.

Many critics point to the Full Self-Driving (FSD) development being too slow to be relevant, such as E.W. Niedermeyer, an Automotive News writer. Niedermeyer tweeted “If we were seeing similar progress on the FSD front, that would truly be something. Unfortunately, that story is only becoming more and more tortured with every contortion and double-down. I’m not sure Musk gets that it ain’t 2016 anymore… things have changed.

Things have changed, but Tesla fans are giving Elon Musk and team time on the new computer hardware buildout and machine learning development.

According to Tesla, the neural network is learning new routes by the nanosecond with more Model 3 drives into the wild. Stuart Bowers, VP of engineering, said this in the recent earnings call, “One area that I’m personally really excited to build on this improvement is active safety. With the advancement in neural networks, covering 360 degrees of view around our car, we can provide a level of constant vigilance that humans just can't.

Today, my husband and I are thankful for @elonmusk . We were saved by our Tesla from a driver going over 60mph. Thank you @elonmusk for making a vehicle safe for our family including our puppy dog Mr.Riley. We’re here with non life threatening injuries. #ElonMusk #teslax #tesla pic.twitter.com/g7zVZB7Bdu

— Katy (@Katea023) November 23, 2018

Tesla wants auto's safety crown and is taking opportunities to emphasize its safety accomplisments. Many people and fans see the long game and seem comfortable there. 

Sidebar: The Jeffries Financial Group just updated Tesla to a buy rating due to its apparent consistency in manufacturing. Jefferies analyst Philippe Houchois recently stated, “Tesla has demonstrated its profit and self-funding potential, its growth becomes value-accretive just as peers are engaging in a mostly negative EV sum game.”