Both vehicles cleared every crash test the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety weighs for its highest honor, and neither needed a caveat on the crashworthiness side. In a release dated September 3, 2026, the institute named the 2027 Kia Telluride and the 2026-27 Tesla Model Y as Top Safety Pick+ winners. That is the upper of IIHS’s two award tiers, above the plain Top Safety Pick.
The announcement is more than a month old, and the details that matter to a buyer sit in the footnotes: a build date for one SUV and a failing grade on a feature the award does not count for the other. Reading the dated release rather than the shorthand version of it also clears up what the award covers: crash protection and crash avoidance, tested by an insurer-funded lab, not a general verdict on either company’s cars.
Top Safety Pick+ against Top Safety Pick
IIHS’s awards page lists six requirements for the Plus tier: Good ratings in the small overlap front, moderate overlap front and side tests; acceptable or good headlights; strong pedestrian crash prevention; and acceptable or good vehicle-to-vehicle front crash prevention, with the crash-prevention systems standard. A vehicle that meets all but the vehicle-to-vehicle requirement can still earn the base Top Safety Pick. The page tallies 73 winners for 2026, 58 of them at the Plus level, so the Telluride and Model Y are two additions to a crowded list rather than a rarity.
The institute’s own news release says both vehicles earned Good ratings in the small overlap front, moderate overlap front and side crash tests and Good headlights, and both were rated Good in vehicle-to-vehicle and pedestrian front crash prevention, standard on all trims.
The Telluride’s June 2026 headlight change
The Kia comes with a production-date condition. IIHS states that only Telluride SUVs built after June 2026 qualify, because those carry good-rated headlights while earlier builds were fitted with marginal ones. AutoGuide’s account ties the change to Kia revising the SUV’s standard LED headlights in June, and notes that buyers should confirm a vehicle’s build date before assuming the award applies. A 2027 Telluride sitting on a lot with an early production date is not covered by the announcement.
Kia’s other awarded models carry similar conditions in the same coverage: the 2026 Sorento qualifies only if built after September 2025, and the 2026 Sportage only if built after May 2025. Headlight hardware changing mid-year is the usual reason an award attaches to a build window instead of a model year.
AutoGuide also describes what Kia changed in the redesigned 2027 model: a reinforced structure, ten standard airbags including a front-center design, illuminated second-row seat belt buckles, and driver-assistance features such as capacitive hands-on detection and lane-following. It lists five Kia models that now meet the 2026 IIHS criteria: the 2027 Telluride, 2026 K4, 2026 EV9, 2026 Sorento and 2026 Sportage. The outlet does not say which of those changes, if any, moved the crash-test results, and IIHS does not attribute the Good ratings to any single feature.
Tesla’s marginal seat belt reminder
The Model Y has no build-date restriction in the release, and Tesla redesigned the vehicle for 2026. It did, however, earn a Marginal rating for seat belt reminders, while the Telluride earned Good. The reminder test checks how a vehicle prompts occupants to buckle up, which is a behavioral safeguard instead of a crash result. IIHS addresses the gap directly on its page: seat belt reminders and LATCH ease of use are two additional evaluations that are not part of the award criteria. The Marginal grade therefore did not block the Model Y from the Plus tier, but it is a published weakness in a test IIHS runs on every award contender.
ConsumerAffairs reports that the two were the only 2026-27 model year vehicles to earn the Plus designation in that round, and that five other tested models missed out: the BMW 3 Series, BMW i4, GMC Canyon crew cab, Lexus IS and Toyota Crown Signia. IIHS’s media-room summary says the GMC Canyon and Toyota Crown Signia earned Marginal moderate overlap results, the BMW 3 Series and i4 earned Good side ratings, and and the Lexus IS earned Acceptable in the side test. Those results show how narrowly the Plus tier is drawn: one Marginal or Acceptable grade in a required crash test is enough to keep a model out. The institute’s own September roundup lists the same group.
The institute framed the results with a reminder aimed at car shoppers, saying they illustrate why it can pay to look beyond a vehicle’s overall reputation for safety. For this pair, that means checking the Telluride’s build date and noting the Model Y’s seat belt reminder grade, both of which sit outside the award itself.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
More from Morning Overview
- Hawaii’s magnitude 6.0 Kona earthquake is now a federal major disaster
- Comcast is shutting down its email service, and Xfinity customers must act to keep it
- Invisible volcanic gas at a California ski resort has killed three ski patrollers
- Verizon just moved to cut landline phone service in 9 states within weeks
