The Nissan Leaf is a safe car. So says the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, which gave the Leaf a five-star rating. Nissan says the Leaf is the first all-electric vehicle to get that many pointy things from NHTSA. This shouldn't exactly come as a surprise, since the European New Car Assessment Program (Euro NCAP) also gave the electric hatch five stars last month. Thus far, the two mainstream plug-in vehicles available in the U.S., the Leaf and the Chevrolet Volt, have both done extremely well in crash tests. Earlier this year, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's conducted crash tests gave both cars the IIHS' Top Safety Pick title. You can see a video of the Euro NCAP Leaf crash test here.
Some readers may be thinking, "but what about the Tesla Roadster?" That all-electric car was put through frontal, rear and side impact crash tests by NHTSA, so what rating did that car get? The Internet is quiet on that issue, and we've asked Tesla for a clarification. We assume that, as a smaller company with a new car, Tesla's Roadster was not subject to the same rules as the Leaf. We'll let you know what Tesla says, but feel free to comment if your knowledge of this issue is better than ours. In any case, there are videos of the NHTSA's Leaf crash tests after the jump. Fair warning to our more sensitive readers: these are perfectly good electric vehicles being destroyed here. Just so you know.
[Source: Nissan]
