It's not enough to look at it, the issue is the shape + a unibody stainless steel outer shell.

Frame + Pane construction allows for crumple zones, I don't see how a unibody stainless steel will allow it.

Whatever you hit becomes the crumple zone, aka the other car.

(/s - it probably is going to be super unsafe and get bad safety scores).

The vehicle shell is sheets of structural steel. It’s not likely to deform usefully when it strikes a wayward meat sack. Combine that with the plethora of small-radius bends that can concentrate the damage quite effectively.

I’ve no doubt that Tesla can make it score well on crash tests though. Crumple zones don’t have to involve literal crumpling of a metal body—it could be achieved with other forms of deformation.

I don't know anything about car design, but always assaumed that crumple zones mostly protected passengers rather than pedestrians. Is that not the case?

The front end of your average modern car has a ton of flimsy plastic in the top of the front bodywork that's for pedestrian protection. It's basically a crumple zone but they don't call it that.

Also the hood / bonnet has softening. In a typical collision the pedestrian's head strikes it, so adding some padding under the surface makes it more survivable. I think you get more stars in crash tests.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwp6HNa6PrI&t=73 shows this quite well visually. The bonnet is surprisingly flexible.

This describes some of the efforts to make frontal impacts less dangerous: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedestrian_safety_through_vehi...

They bleed off energy, to the benefit of both.