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Tesla designs safer airbag deployment system through seat sensors in new patent
Tesla’s electric cars are among the safest on the road, so much so that the Model 3, Model S, and Model X are among the NHTSA’s top vehicles with the lowest probability of injury in the event of an accident. Thanks to Tesla’s use of ultra-high-strength steel and aluminum, as well as the vehicles’ extra large crumple zones due to their all-electric design, the company’s electric cars are capable of protecting their occupants when untoward events happen on the road.
If a recently published patent application is any indication, though, it appears that Tesla is exploring more ways to make its vehicles even safer. Tesla’s recent patent, titled “Sensors for Vehicle Occupant Classification Systems and Methods,” taps into the company’s prowess in tech by using a system that alows cars to detect and/or classify their occupants based on readings from a series of sensors in the seats. With such a system in place, safety features could activate in a way that is optimized for passengers.
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- Diagrams depicting Tesla’s “Sensors for Vehicle Occupant Classification Systems and Methods” patent. (Credit: US Patent Office)
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- Diagrams depicting Tesla’s “Sensors for Vehicle Occupant Classification Systems and Methods” patent. (Credit: US Patent Office)
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- Diagrams depicting Tesla’s “Sensors for Vehicle Occupant Classification Systems and Methods” patent. (Credit: US Patent Office)
Diagrams depicting Tesla’s “Sensors for Vehicle Occupant Classification Systems and Methods” patent. (Credit: US Patent Office)
Tesla notes that cars on the road today are becoming safer overall, thanks to systems that monitor operations while the vehicle is in motion and features that provide coordinated alerts and assistance as needed. While such processes make vehicles safe, though, Tesla states that there is still a large area for improvement. One such area, according to the electric car maker, is in the way airbags deploy in the event of an accident.
“Difficulties remain in reliably detecting the presence of vehicle occupants and accurately classifying them as children, relatively small adults, and/or according to other classifications, and particularly in differentiating between classifications. Accurate classification can be critical when the vehicle is attempting to assist or enact safety measures to protect the occupant.
“In particular, airbag deployment can be adjusted to reduce risk of injury caused by the airbag while maintaining safety of the occupant during a collision. However, while reduced-force airbag deployment is recommended for relatively small adult females, it is not recommended for young children, even though the young children can reach heights and weights approaching those of the relatively small adult females. Thus, there is a need for an improved methodology to provide reliable and accurate vehicle occupant classification, particularly in the context of controlling an occupant restraint system that can apply force to an operator of the vehicle.”
Tesla’s patent application explores the use of sensors placed on the vehicle’s seats that enable the cars to classify their occupants. By classifying the size, weight, and body type (among others) of a passenger, the car would be able to deploy airbags in the safest way possible during an accident. Tesla describes this system as follows.
“In accordance with various embodiments of the present disclosure, occupant detection and classification may be provided by an occupant weight sensor, an occupant presence sensor, and a logic device configured to convert sensor signals provided by the occupant weight sensor and the occupant presence sensor into an estimated occupant weight and an occupant presence response, which may be used together to reliably detect and classify the occupant with increased sensitivity, accuracy, and granularity compared to conventional detection systems.
“In particular, embodiments of the present occupant classification system may be employed to detect and differentiate a child from a relatively small woman or man and disable, partially enable, or fully enable an airbag as appropriate. Such occupant classification systems may be implemented with various types of user feedback mechanisms, including reporting detections and classifications both locally and remotely, such as to a smartphone, for example, and reporting potentially unsafe conditions and/or undesired operation of the vehicle, as described herein.”
With this system in place, Tesla’s electric cars would be even safer than they already are. If any, this would widen the gap further between Tesla’s vehicles and conventional cars, many of which are bogged down in frontal collisions due to the presence of a large, heavy engine under the hood. That said, this recent patent application all but emphasizes Tesla’s proactive nature and the company’s tendency to always make efforts to improve.
This particular nature was emphasized by Elon Musk on Twitter last October, when he explained that there is “no such thing” as a “full refresh” or even a model year at Tesla. In his tweet, Musk stated that all the company’s vehicles are partially upgraded every month “as soon as a subsystem is ready for production,” thereby ensuring buyers that they are getting the best vehicles available at their time of purchase. This, coupled with Tesla’s trademark over-the-air updates — which give new features from driver assist functions such as Navigate on Autopilot, to fun, quirky things like the Romance Mode Easter Egg — truly make the company’s electric cars unique on the road.
The full text of Tesla’s recent patent application could be accessed here.
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SpaceX Starship Flight 13 faces wrath of the Texas skies
SpaceX pushed Starship Flight 13 to Friday, blaming weather instead of the previous engine issues.
SpaceX called off Thursday’s launch attempt of Starship Flight 13, pushing the mission to Friday because of weather tied to Tropical Storm Bertha. The company confirmed the delay on X, noting “Now targeting Friday, July 24 for Starship’s thirteenth flight test, due to weather. A key objective for the flight test is to get clear imagery from the ground of Starship’s heatshield as it flies at a higher dynamic pressure during ascent, which won’t be possible with today’s weather conditions.”
This is the second delay for Flight 13 in two weeks. SpaceX first tried to launch the mission on July 16, but the countdown ended in an automated abort at T-0 when four of Super Heavy Booster 20’s 33 Raptor engines failed to ignite. Musk said at the time that two Raptors would need to be removed and replaced, as Teslarati reported. The company spent the following week destacking Ship 40 and Booster 20, swapping engines, and running leak checks before restacking the vehicle on Pad 2 Wednesday night, according to Spaceflight Now’s live coverage.
Unlike the engine problem, Thursday’s delay has nothing to do with the hardware. SpaceX wants clean footage of Starship’s heat shield captured from the ground as the vehicle flies through max dynamic pressure, something the storm’s cloud cover over South Texas would not allow. The company said visibility should improve for Friday’s attempt, with the same 90 minute window opening at 5:45 p.m. CT.
Flight 13 will be the second outing for the V3 versions of Starship and Super Heavy, following their debut on Flight 12 in May. The mission carries 20 production Starlink V3 satellites, the first time SpaceX has flown operational satellites rather than mass simulators on Starship. Six of those satellites are fitted with cameras to inspect the heat shield from a different angle during ascent, giving engineers a second data source beyond the ground imagery the weather is currently blocking.
Booster 20 will attempt a boostback burn and a splashdown landing burn in the Gulf of America, while Ship 40 follows a suborbital trajectory toward a landing in the Indian Ocean. The flight plan largely mirrors Flight 12, though the booster will run a more aggressive ascent burn after max Q this time, and the ship’s heat shield includes load sensing tiles meant to measure stress at the higher dynamic pressure SpaceX is targeting.
If Friday’s attempt succeeds, Flight 13 could be the last suborbital test in the program. SpaceX is already looking to push for an orbital flight on Flight 14.
Tesla stock (NASDAQ: TSLA) endured one of its sharpest single-day declines in years on July 23, tumbling approximately 14.5 percent and closing near $320 after opening the session around $374. The drop erased more than $140 billion in market value amid heavy trading volume and left the shares at multi-week lows.
The sell-off followed the company’s second-quarter 2026 results, released the previous evening. Tesla reported record revenue of $28.2 billion, up 26 percent year over year, driven by a Q2-record 480,126 vehicle deliveries. Energy storage deployments also rose strongly.
Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
Yet profitability disappointed sharply. Operating income fell 57 percent to $398 million, compressing the operating margin to just 1.4 percent. Non-GAAP earnings per share came in at $0.33, well below the roughly $0.53 analysts had expected. Free cash flow turned negative by $1.1 billion as capital expenditures surged 142 percent to $5.8 billion, largely tied to accelerated spending on artificial intelligence, robotics, and autonomous systems.
The losses on capex were expected, as Tesla said it would be spending heavily in 2026.
Investors also reacted to lingering uncertainty surrounding key product timelines. During the Earnings Call, management reiterated ambitions for Robotaxi deployment and the Optimus humanoid robot, but offered limited new concrete milestones, renewing questions about execution pace that have long accompanied Tesla’s ambitious roadmap.
The magnitude of the decline places it among Tesla’s more severe one-day percentage losses since its 2010 initial public offering. Historically, the two largest single-day drops (split-adjusted) remain September 8, 2020, when shares fell 21.1 percent amid broader market volatility and valuation concerns, and January 13, 2012, with a 19.3 percent plunge during the company’s early growth struggles.
Other notable declines include an 18.6 percent drop on March 16, 2020, at the onset of pandemic-related market turmoil. Thursday’s move ranks roughly ninth on the all-time list but stands out as the steepest in more than a year.
Despite the short-term pain, Tesla’s long-term trajectory has repeatedly recovered from such volatility. The latest results underscore both the strength of its core automotive and energy businesses and the near-term costs of heavy investment in next-generation technologies.
Elon Musk clapped back at France’s decision to withhold the approval for Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) Supervised system, projecting a clear and blunt message to French Transport Minister Phillippe Tabarot, after he publicly rejected the technology in its current form.
Tabarot outlines several concerns with Tesla Full Self-Driving in a detailed video statement, where he said, “The safety trade-offs are not yet sufficient to authorize it as it currently stands,” he said. He emphasized that FSD is not a true self-driving system and that the driver remains fully responsible.
Key issues Tabarot also brought up included allowing speeding when surrounding traffic exceeds limits and what he believes are insufficient guarantees of driver attention during complex urban maneuvers such as lane changes, intersections, and roundabouts.
Delaying the approval of FSD in France will cost lives
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 22, 2026
While acknowledging technological progress and France’s support for autonomous innovation, Tabarot stressed that deployment must prioritize road safety. He noted ongoing technical discussions with Tesla, the Netherlands, and other European partners, with further ecosystem meetings planned for the fall.
Musk’s rebuke highlights the human cost of regulatory caution. Tesla’s latest safety reports provide compelling data supporting accelerated adoption. In the most recent 12-month period, vehicles using FSD (Supervised) recorded one major collision per approximately 5.1 million miles driven, dramatically better than the U.S. national average of one crash per 698,000 miles.
Even Tesla vehicles driven manually with active safety features outperform the average by a wide margin. These figures come from billions of real-world miles of telemetry, showing FSD vehicles involved in far fewer incidents than both manual Teslas and the broader U.S. fleet.
Critics argue Tesla’s comparisons require careful scrutiny regarding reporting thresholds and fleet demographics, yet the data consistently positions FSD as a potential lifesaver. With road fatalities remaining a leading cause of death worldwide, Musk contends that proven safer technology should not face prolonged bureaucratic hurdles.
France’s measured approach reflects the broader European regulatory caution, which many, especially Musk, have been critical of in the past. However, as autonomous systems from Tesla and competitors like Waymo demonstrate superior safety in independent studies, pressure is mounting for harmonized approvals.
Musk’s warning carries the belief that every month of delay may equate to avoidable tragedies on European roads.
SpaceX Starship Flight 13 faces wrath of the Texas skies
Tesla stock tumbles after earnings, one of its sharpest single-day declines
