The 2025 Tesla Model 3 earns the IIHS Top Safety Pick award: the US results, criterion by criterion

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), a nonprofit body whose crash tests underpin a widely cited US safety rating, carries the Top Safety Pick designation for the 2025 Tesla Model 3 on its US rating page as read on September 21, 2026. The rating applies to 2025-26 model years, and the page classifies the car as a "midsize luxury car / 4-door sedan" that is "Fully electric."

IIHS describes its ratings as covering two pillars: "crashworthiness — how well a vehicle protects its occupants in a crash — and crash avoidance and mitigation — technology that can prevent a crash or lessen its severity." The Model 3's award rests on results across both, plus a third category for seat belts and child restraints where the sedan scored lowest. Its scale runs from Good (G) through Acceptable (A) and Marginal (M) to Poor (P).

Crashworthiness: strong front and side results

The Model 3 earns a G for small overlap front, the test that clips a vehicle against a rigid barrier at a fraction of its width. The rating covers both sides, and the car "was redesigned for the 2024 model year."

The small overlap rating combines a driver-side and a passenger-side evaluation, and IIHS states that "If the results of the two evaluations differ, then the combined small overlap rating is equal to the lower rating." Both sides earned an overall G for the Model 3. "Two passenger-side small overlap front tests of the Model 3 were conducted, one by the Institute and the other by Tesla. Ratings are based on both tests." The driver-side rating, too, "is based on a test of a 2025 Model 3 conducted by Tesla."

In the updated moderate overlap front test, the Model 3 takes an A overall. The structure and safety cage rated G, as did the driver injury measures, but the rear passenger chest measure came in at M, the lowest mark in the crashworthiness section. The updated side test, by contrast, earned an overall G.

Crash avoidance: Good in both front crash prevention tests

The standard Collision Avoidance Assist system earned a G in the vehicle-to-vehicle 2.0 evaluation, with the car and motorcycle runs all recorded as "Collision avoided"; for the semitrailer, "Only warning is tested with the semitrailer." The pedestrian front crash prevention test also drew a G; among its documented runs, in the parallel adult night scenarios at 25 and 37 mph the vehicle avoided a collision under both low and high beams, and in the 37 mph high-beam run "a warning was issued 3.1 seconds before impact."

Where the sedan fell short: headlights and seat belt reminders

Headlights scored an A. The technical measurements list, for example, an average minimum useful illumination distance on the straightaway of 150.1 m on the right edge with high beams versus 72.7 m on the right edge of a 150 m radius right curve.

The lowest mark in the ratings is for seat belt reminders, rated M, with an unbelted occupant alert initiation time in the "Too short (8-89 seconds)" band for the front row. LATCH ease of use earned an A. These criteria sit outside the two crash-test pillars but count toward the same award.

Context from the issuing body

The moderate overlap front result carries a noted criteria change: a "February 2024 adjustment to rating criteria." IIHS itself is described as "an independent, nonprofit scientific and educational organization dedicated to reducing deaths, injuries and property damage from motor vehicle crashes through research and evaluation and through education of consumers, policymakers and safety professionals."

How to check the result yourself

These are IIHS's ratings, not ours; the publication has not driven, tested or measured the car. IIHS can revise ratings and criteria, so the standing status of the 2025 Model 3 is best confirmed on IIHS's own vehicle ratings listing, under the US protocols that produced these results for 2025-26 model years.