The redesigned 2026 and 2027 Tesla Model Y earned a Top Safety Pick+ award from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, the group’s highest rating. IIHS lists the award in the midsize luxury SUV category on its 2026 Top Safety Picks page. If you’re cross-shopping the Model Y, here’s what that award is actually built on.
Where it scored well
Per IIHS’s detailed rating page for the vehicle, the Model Y earned the top “Good” score in every crashworthiness test IIHS runs: small overlap front on both the driver and passenger side, the updated moderate overlap front test, and the updated side test. Its headlights also rated Good across trims, though IIHS notes the base trim shows “some glare” on one of the curve-test measurements where the Premium and Performance trims don’t. On crash avoidance, the standard automatic emergency braking system rated Good in both IIHS’s vehicle-to-vehicle test — avoiding collisions at 31, 37, and 43 mph in testing against passenger cars, motorcycles, and semitrailers — and its pedestrian test, avoiding crossing children and adults across IIHS’s test scenarios.
The one weak spot: seat belt reminders
The Model Y’s only rating below “Good” was for seat belt reminders, which IIHS marked “Marginal.” IIHS’s scorecard says the front-row audible and visual unbelted alert is too short, and that the second row has no startup status alert at all — meaning the car doesn’t tell you at power-on whether a rear passenger’s belt is buckled. That’s a real, if minor, gap for anyone regularly carpooling or driving with rear-seat passengers, and it’s worth knowing since it’s the one place Tesla didn’t sweep the ratings.
Child seat anchors
IIHS separately rates LATCH child-seat anchor ease of use as “Acceptable”: two rear seating positions have easy-to-use complete hardware, while a third position has a tether anchor only, without a matching lower anchor in the same easy-to-find spot. If you’re installing more than two child seats, it’s worth checking IIHS’s specific position-by-position notes before you buy rather than assuming all three rear positions install the same way.
What Top Safety Pick+ actually means
Top Safety Pick+ is IIHS’s highest tier, above the standard Top Safety Pick — it requires good ratings across the full crashworthiness suite plus at least an acceptable rating on front crash prevention and headlights. It’s a separate rating system from NHTSA’s star ratings, and it’s specific to the redesigned 2026 and 2027 model years; if you’re looking at an older, pre-refresh Model Y, this rating doesn’t carry over automatically. For a buyer deciding between the Model Y and a competing midsize SUV, it’s one of the more concrete, apples-to-apples data points available, since IIHS runs the same standardized tests across every vehicle it rates.
Photo by Makara Heng.
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