Tesla announced on 13 September 2026 that the 2026 Model 3 had earned a five-star overall safety rating from the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. That much was widely repeated. The more interesting part is in NHTSA's own ratings database, and nobody mentioned it: the last two model years of Model 3 were never rated.
The scores
NHTSA lists the 2026 Model 3 in rear- and all-wheel drive, with identical results for each:
| Test | Rating |
|---|---|
| Overall | 5 stars |
| Frontal crash, overall | 5 stars |
| Frontal, driver / passenger | 5 stars / 5 stars |
| Side crash, overall | 5 stars |
| Side barrier, driver / passenger | 5 stars / 5 stars |
| Side pole, driver | 5 stars |
| Rollover | 5 stars |
| Rollover risk | 6.8% |
A clean sweep, in other words, including the side pole test that tends to separate cars once the barrier tests have compressed everyone at the top. Forward collision warning, lane departure warning and electronic stability control are all listed as standard. Tesla also says the car meets the criteria for all ten of NHTSA's recommended safety technologies, four of them baseline and six of them recommendations that only apply from model year 2027.
The gap nobody reported
Here is the context that makes the rating worth an article rather than a press release.
| Model year | NHTSA overall rating |
|---|---|
| 2022 | 5 stars (rollover risk 6.6%) |
| 2023 | 5 stars (rollover risk 6.6%) |
| 2024 | Not Rated |
| 2025 | Not Rated |
| 2026 | 5 stars (rollover risk 6.8%) |
The Project Highland refresh reached North America as a 2024 model. NHTSA did not rate it that year, and did not rate it in 2025 either. Every five-star Model 3 figure quoted in the intervening two years therefore described the pre-refresh car — a different body structure, different front end and different interior.
This is the first time the refreshed Model 3 has been crash-tested by the federal agency, and it confirms the redesign did not cost the car anything measurable. The only number that moved is rollover risk, from 6.6% to 6.8%, which is a rounding-level difference and still comfortably inside the five-star band.
Europe already had its answer
European buyers did not have to wait through that gap. Euro NCAP tested the refreshed Model 3 in its 2025 cycle, under a protocol tightened that year, and awarded five stars with 90% for adult occupant protection, 93% for child occupant protection and 89% for vulnerable road users — enough to take Best in Class among large family cars when the results were published in January 2026.
The two ratings are not interchangeable. Euro NCAP grades on a percentage scale across four domains and re-tightens its protocol regularly, so a five-star European result carries more separation than a five-star American one, where a large share of new cars now reach the top band.
What both now agree on is the narrower point: whatever Tesla changed in the Highland redesign, it did not weaken the car in a crash.