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Tesla Model 3 gets penalized in Europe despite top scores in vehicle assistance and safety
In collaboration with Thatcham Research, the Euro NCAP has launched the world’s first Assisted Driving Grading system, a new set of metrics that are specifically designed to evaluate the driver-assist systems of cars available on the market today. For its first batch of vehicles, the firms evaluated 10 cars, from premium SUVs like the Mercedes-Benz GLE to affordable hatchbacks like the Renault Clio to all-electric vehicles like the Tesla Model 3.
As noted by Thatcham Research Director of Insurance Research Matthew Avery in a video outlining the results of the Assisted Driving Grading system’s first tests, vehicles would be graded on three metrics: the level of vehicle assistance that they provide, the level of driver engagement that they offer, and the effectiveness of their safety backup systems. The results of these tests, especially on the Tesla Model 3’s part, were rather peculiar, to say the least.
Out of 10 vehicles that were evaluated, the Tesla Model 3 ranked 6th with a “Moderate” grade, falling behind the Mercedes-Benz GLE, BMW 3-Series, and Audi Q8, which were graded as “Very Good,” and the Ford Kuga, which received a “Good” rating. This was despite the Tesla Model 3 receiving the top scores in the “Vehicle Assistance” and “Safety Backup” metrics.
The study, for example, dubbed the Model 3 as outstanding in terms of steering assistance, with the vehicle steering itself exceptionally well through an S-shaped curve at speeds of 80, 100, and 120 km/h. Tesla’s lane change systems were also satisfactory, despite the system’s limitations in Europe. Distance control was dominated by the Model 3 as well, with the evaluators stating that Tesla’s adaptive cruise control featured a “high level of technical maturity.” From a score of 100, Tesla’s vehicle assistance received a score of 87, the highest among the cars tested.
The Model 3’s safety backup systems were also a league above its competition. As noted in a post from the Allgemeiner Deutscher Automobil-Club e.V. (ADAC), Tesla demonstrated its strengths with the Model 3’s collision avoidance systems. The all-electric sedan earned a perfect score in the firms’ tests, outperforming its premium German competition. Overall, the Model 3 received an impressive score of 95 in the Assisted Driving Grading system’s “Safety Backup” metric.
Considering these scores, one might wonder why the Model 3 ended up ranked 6th among the 10 vehicles tested by the Euro NCAP and Thatcham Research. As it turned out, this was because of the Model 3’s poor scores in the “Driver Engagement” metric, where the vehicle only earned a score of 35 out of 100. So poor was the Model 3’s scores in this metric that it was ranked last among the 10 vehicles that were evaluated.
A look at the reasons behind the Model 3’s poor scores in “Driver Engagement” includes a number of interesting insights from Thatcham Research and the Euro NCAP. When testing the vehicles’ steering override functions, for example, the evaluators stated that the Model 3 resisted steering overrides from its driver. These issues were explained in the ADAC’s post.
“Should the driver make a steering movement in order to avoid an object or a pothole in the roadway, the steering assistant should allow this without resistance. In the Tesla Model 3, for example, this is not the case. Apparently, Tesla trusts the system more than its driver. The necessary cooperative assistance is not given. Instead, the Tesla system prevents its driver from attempting to intervene – it mustn’t be,” the ADAC remarked in its post.
Even more interesting is that part of the Model 3’s poor “Driver Engagement” scores was due to the term “Autopilot,” which Tesla uses to describe its driver-assist suite. The evaluators argued that the term “Autopilot” was misleading and irresponsible on Tesla’s part, and this was heavily taken against the Model 3’s rankings in the Assisted Driving Grading system.
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“When it comes to the first test criterion – consumer information – the Tesla Model 3 in particular fails. The assistance systems are referred to as “Autopilot” in the operating instructions for the Model 3 as well as in the sales brochures and in marketing. However, the term suggests capabilities that the system does not have in sufficient measure. It tempts the driver to rely on the capabilities of the system – which is currently not allowed by the legislature anyway. Due to its good quick-start operating aid, the Tesla Model 3 still receives 10 points,” the evaluators noted.
Ultimately, these complaints about Autopilot’s branding ended up pulling down the Model 3’s scores to the point where the all-electric sedan was ranked below the Ford Kuga. Thatcham Research Director of Insurance Research Matthew Avery explained this in a video released about the evaluation. “The Tesla Model 3 was the best for safety backup and vehicle assistance but lost ground for misleading consumers about the capability of its Autopilot system and actively discouraging drivers from engaging when behind the wheel,” Avery said.
As noted by Avery, it is pertinent for vehicles to exhibit a balance to score very well in the Assisted Driving Grading system. This was not achieved by the Model 3 despite its industry-leading backup safety systems and actual vehicle assistance tech. ADAC explained it best when outlining why the Tesla Model 3 lost to four other vehicles despite being equipped with what is noticeably the most advanced driver-assist system.
“When analyzing the test results, it is noticeable that the Tesla Model 3 has the most advanced assistance systems. With 95 points for emergency assistance (Safety Backup) and 91 points for technical assistance, it doesn’t beat the Mercedes GLE by far, but at least 11 points… Because Euro NCAP removes the many points in the area of driver support from the Tesla, because on the one hand it does not sufficiently comply with the driver’s request for a steering correction. On the other hand, because Tesla is irresponsible about the term autopilot – an even more serious reason. With only 36 points from the test area driver integration, the Tesla falls back to sixth place in the final bill,” the ADAC noted.
Thatcham Research’s overall findings could be viewed in the video below.
SpaceX stock did the opposite of what most of Wall Street expected this week, when the day designed to be its most dangerous turned into a rally, and the rally kept going.
Thursday marked the first major lockup expiration since SpaceX’s June IPO, making roughly 911.5 million insider held shares eligible to trade for the first time, more than doubling the company’s public float. Analysts and short sellers had spent weeks bracing for a flood of selling, especially after the stock fell 13 percent following its first earnings report as a public company on Tuesday. Instead, shares rose 6.1 percent Thursday to close at $114.92, and by Friday they were trading near $129, up more than another 12 percent on the day.
SpaceX shorts get warned by Musk ally, echoing Tesla’s early struggles
The setup made the outcome notable. Short interest had climbed to roughly 34 percent of the float heading into earnings, among the highest of any large cap stock, with about 95 percent of available shares to borrow already on loan. CEO Elon Musk warned short sellers twice in the weeks before the lockup, writing on X that “the survival probability of firms who maintain a significant short position in SpaceX over time is very low,” then following up on the morning of earnings with “I try to warn them, but they just double down.”
When the newly unlocked shares hit the market and the selloff never showed up, some of that short position appears to have started unwinding. TipRanks reported that options activity shifted toward bullish strategies like put selling and risk reversals following the rally, with roughly $600 million in options premium trading Thursday alone. Retail buyers also stepped in during the earnings dip, according to Vanda Research.
The fundamentals behind the stock have not changed much in a week. SpaceX’s revenue nearly doubled year over year to $7.8 billion, with Starlink subscribers doubling to 12 million and the company’s AI segment growing 247 percent. What spooked investors on Tuesday was the spending side. Capital expenditures jumped to more than $18 billion for the quarter, up from $2.8 billion a year earlier, with AI investment alone rising from $749 million to $15.8 billion. Wall Street remains split on whether that spending is building infrastructure SpaceX needs or outrunning what the business can currently support, a debate Teslarati has tracked since shares first came under pressure.
None of that resolves the bigger question hanging over the stock. Thursday’s release was only the first of nine staggered lockup tranches, with roughly $800 billion worth of additional shares scheduled to become eligible through October, and Musk’s own stake stays locked until next June. If this week is any indication, the market is treating that supply as something it can absorb rather than something to fear, at least for now.
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The Boring Company’s newest Vegas Station has a permit quietly waiting behind it
Sahara Las Vegas opened a new Vegas Loop station, joining an exclusive two resort transit club.
Sahara Las Vegas opened a new Vegas Loop station Thursday, giving The Boring Company’s underground transit system its northernmost stop yet on the Strip. The station sits at Sahara’s Paradise Road entrance, on the southeast corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Sahara Avenue, and connects riders to the Las Vegas Convention Center, other Strip resorts on the network and, eventually, Harry Reid International Airport.
The addition makes Sahara the second resort, after Fontainebleau opened its own station in January, to get a stop built at street level rather than tucked into the property itself. Sahara now joins Westgate as the only two Strip resorts offering both a Vegas Loop station and a stop on the Las Vegas Monorail, giving guests two separate ways to get around without leaving the property.
The Boring Company just doubled its tunneling power in Nashville
The bigger news buried in Thursday’s announcement is what comes next. Boring Company has already secured its first permit to tunnel north of Sahara Avenue, extending the network beyond where it currently ends, even though permits to push the Loop toward downtown Las Vegas still haven’t been granted. Crews are also working on a two mile dual tunnel line running from Westgate to a planned station at 4744 Paradise Road, just north of Tropicana Avenue, that Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority CEO Steve Hill has said the company hopes to open in time for November’s Las Vegas Grand Prix.
Ridership has grown alongside the buildout. The Loop moved roughly 82,000 passengers during CONEXPO in early March, a total the company highlighted on its own X account at the time, and the system has now carried more than 4 million passengers through 11 open stations since it began running in 2021. The airport connector tunnels, meant to give the Loop a direct link to Harry Reid, have slipped past their original first quarter target and remain under construction, with Boring Company director Mike Baier saying that a full opening is still a few months out.
For Sahara, the calculation is straightforward. Convention traffic drives a large share of Loop ridership, and a station at the property’s front door gives conventiongoers one more reason to book rooms on the Strip’s north end instead of closer to the convention center itself.
Elon Musk
Tesla’s mysterious Robovan makes a sneak peek with Optimus in Terafab video
Elon Musk shared a new Terafab video showing Optimus, Robovans, and a stunningly futuristic campus.
Elon Musk posted a new video of Terafab on X Thursday morning, and the most eye-catching details in it were not the building itself, but two products still awaiting production: Optimus and the Robovan.
The concept render, credited to SpaceX, shows Optimus robots working the grounds of the roughly 2.5-mile-long facility planned for the Gibbons Creek site in Grimes County, while a Robovan glides along an elevated roadway cutting through the building itself, sharing the frame with a Tesla Semi and a Cybercab.
Robovan is the boxy, driverless people and cargo mover Musk unveiled alongside Cybercab at Tesla’s “We, Robot” event in October 2024. He pitched it as a way to move up to 20 passengers at once, or handle freight instead, at a target cost he claimed could fall under a dollar a mile, with no steering wheel or pedals, the same layout as Cybercab. Nearly two years later, Robovan still has no confirmed production timeline and has not shown up in any factory footage, which makes Thursday’s render one of the only recent looks at the vehicle in any form.
Terafab Texas will be the largest and most valuable building on Earth by far.
And it will be stunningly beautiful. pic.twitter.com/4NweOqTL7y
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 6, 2026
Optimus has moved further along. Tesla began converting Fremont’s old Model S and Model X assembly line into a Gen 3 Optimus production line earlier this year, and Musk visited the site on July 1 to mark the changeover. A second, larger Optimus plant is under construction at Giga Texas, targeting volume production in summer 2027 and eventual capacity of 10 million units a year. Tesla AI lead Ashok Elluswamy said this month the robot has “big shoes to fill” in replacing the S and X line, while Musk has repeatedly called Optimus the company’s biggest product of any kind, with a long-term price he has pegged between $20,000 and $30,000.
Check out the “Robovan” from @Tesla
📸: @Teslarati pic.twitter.com/D4es2i9NUe
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) October 11, 2024
“Terafab Texas will be the largest and most valuable building on Earth by far,” Musk wrote alongside the clip. “And it will be stunningly beautiful.”
One quote post summed up the reaction: “Futuristic scene with RoboVan + Cybercab + Tesla Semi + Optimus.”
Beyond the vehicles, the architecture wrapped around them stands out too. The building’s facade is canted at sharp angles, with illuminated horizontal bands running through what appears to be a multi level interior visible from outside. Below the elevated roadway, pedestrians walk along a plaza next to a reflecting pool, and the skyline behind the campus is dotted with angular spires that read more like sculpture than infrastructure, a departure from the strictly utilitarian look of Gigafactory Texas or Starbase.
The timing tracks with what Terafab representative Riley Trennell told Grimes County residents on Wednesday, when he said renderings of the facility would be released “within days.” Musk’s post followed less than 24 hours later, and Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s office sent out its own release Thursday confirming the project. As Teslarati reported this morning, Terafab’s tax abatement agreements with Grimes County are now signed and active, and SpaceX has sent the county its first $10 million payment under that deal. The dollar figure tied to this phase of construction, per Reuters, is $16.8 billion, one of the first hard capital expenditure numbers attached to Terafab since Musk unveiled the joint Tesla-SpaceX-xAI venture in March.Reaction on X ranged from enthusiastic to skeptical. “God Bless Texas! Everything is bigger and better in Texas!” one reply read. Another was more measured: “Terafab in a decade…..”
Whether the finished building matches the render is a separate question from whether Musk wanted people talking about the render itself. Less than a day after posting, the video had already crossed 5.5 million views.
Elon Musk and SpaceX shrugs off the trading day Wall Street feared most
The Boring Company’s newest Vegas Station has a permit quietly waiting behind it
