Every electric car gets five stars — rollover risk is the number that still separates them

By Muhammet Çay, editor · Updated 23 September 2026 · How we work out these numbers

9 of the 10 electric cars with a US crash rating score the full five stars overall, and the ones that do not simply were not rated. The star has stopped separating cars. One number on the same NHTSA page still does: rollover risk runs from 6.6% to 11.6% across these cars — and every electric SUV here sits below every petrol SUV NHTSA tested, which start at 15.1%.

A rating that everything passes is not a rating

Five stars is now the entry price. Of the 10 electric cars here with a US rating, 9 are five-star overall; of the eight that also carry a Euro NCAP score, all eight are five stars there too. A shopper comparing two cars on the headline number learns nothing, which is a problem for the shopper rather than for the cars — the tests are the same tests they always were, and the industry has caught up with them.

Underneath the star, NHTSA publishes something it does not round: the calculated probability that the vehicle rolls over in a single-vehicle crash. It is a percentage, not a star, so it keeps discriminating long after the stars have converged.

The battery floor shows up in the physics

Electric SUVs carry several hundred kilograms of battery under the floor, which is the lowest place in the car to put mass. Lower centre of gravity, lower rollover risk — and NHTSA’s own figures show it plainly. The electric SUVs here run from 7.9% (Tesla Model Y Long Range AWD) to 11.6% (Toyota bZ4X AWD 73.1 kWh). The three mainstream petrol SUVs tested in the same programme run from 15.1% to 15.5%. There is no overlap: the worst electric SUV in this set is 3.5 points better than the best petrol one.

The electric saloons go lower again — 6.6% for the Tesla Model 3 Long Range AWD and 6.7% for the Hyundai Ioniq 6 Long Range RWD — for the ordinary reason that a saloon is lower than an SUV to begin with. Body style still dominates; the battery moves each class down within it.

Every car, every sub-score

Model years differ: NHTSA rates a car once and carries the result forward, so the year in this table is the year the tested vehicle was sold, not the year of the car on sale today. Where a car has both, the Euro NCAP overall rating is shown alongside for contrast — the two programmes test different things and are not comparable point for point.

The complaint column is the one most easily misread. It is a raw count of owner complaints filed with NHTSA for that model year, so it scales with how many cars are on the road: the Tesla Model 3 Long Range AWD leads it largely because it is one of the best-selling electric cars in the country. Treat it as an indicator of fleet size first and quality second.

Look up a car

The full NHTSA card for each: sub-scores for driver and passenger separately, the rollover figure behind the star, and the open investigation and recall counts.

The cars with no US rating at all

4 of the cars on this site are sold in the United States and have never been through the programme: BMW i4 eDrive40, Porsche Taycan (rear-wheel drive), Rivian R1T Dual Motor, Large pack, Volvo EX30 Single Motor Extended Range. That is not a bad result, it is no result — NHTSA rates a subset of what is sold, weighted towards volume models, and a low-volume or newly launched car often waits years. Where a car has a Euro NCAP score instead, it is on its own page.

A related question — how often these cars are recalled, and how many of those recalls need a workshop visit — is answered from the same agency’s data in which EV recalls actually require a dealer visit.

Frequently asked questions

Which electric car is safest?

On the US star rating, none of them separates from the others: 9 of 10 score five stars overall. On rollover risk, the lowest here is the Tesla Model 3 Long Range AWD at 6.6% and the highest the Toyota bZ4X AWD 73.1 kWh at 11.6% — but that gap mostly reflects body style, not engineering quality.

Are electric cars safer than petrol cars in a rollover?

On this evidence, electric SUVs are meaningfully less likely to roll: every one here is below 15.1%, where the petrol SUVs NHTSA tested begin. The mechanism is not disputed — a battery pack under the floor lowers the centre of gravity — and rollover risk is the one crash metric where that shows up directly.

What does the rollover percentage actually mean?

NHTSA’s estimate of the chance that the vehicle rolls over given a single-vehicle crash. It is calculated from a static stability measurement and a dynamic manoeuvre test, not counted from real crashes, and it says nothing about how likely you are to crash in the first place.

Why do some cars here have no rating?

Because NHTSA has not tested them. The programme covers a subset of the market and favours high-volume models; 4 of the US-sold cars on this site are simply absent from it. An untested car is not an unsafe car, and this page marks the difference rather than filling the gap with a guess.

Do five stars from NHTSA and five from Euro NCAP mean the same thing?

No. They use different crash configurations, different dummies and different weightings, and Euro NCAP re-tightens its protocol every few years so a 2021 five-star result is a lower bar than a 2025 one. The two columns in the table above are shown side by side for context, not as equivalents.

Sources

Star ratings, sub-scores, rollover risk, and complaint, investigation and recall counts: US NHTSA — New Car Assessment Program (5-Star Safety Ratings), SafetyRatings API, retrieved 2026-09-07 through its public SafetyRatings service. Petrol comparison vehicles are 2025 all-wheel-drive versions from the same programme. Euro NCAP ratings are as credited on each car’s own page. Body style and vehicle identity are from this site’s own database; the grouping, the electric-against-petrol comparison and the ranking are ours.