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Is there any indication the bar broke?

It looks like it may have stayed in place and sliced through the car. In most other cars, it'd hit a dense engine before passengers; in a Tesla, that space is a trunk.



Engines are not crash structures in gasoline vehicles. It’s the frame rails that are designed to soften the impact. Having more empty space in front of the passengers actually makes it easier to dissipate energy over a longer period of distance/time before parts start to intrude on the passenger compartment.


In most cases, you don’t want a dense engine. The crumple zone in the Tesla is actually really effective since there is so much compressible space: https://electrek.co/2017/01/16/tesla-model-s-high-speed-cras...

But you could be right that the Tesla’s crumple zone reinforcements didn't impact the bar.




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