The 12 Safest Electric Vehicles You Can Buy in 2026
With gas prices near $4 and EV consideration picking up, USA Today published its list of the safest battery-electric vehicles for 2026. Here's a breakdown of what made the cut and why safety is increasingly a differentiator in the EV market.
Safety equipment has always been a key factor in vehicle purchase decisions. But for electric vehicles, it’s taken on a new dimension — partly because EV buyers tend to be more research-driven than average, and partly because the vehicles themselves, with their lower centers of gravity and advanced driver-assistance systems, often have genuinely different safety profiles than their combustion counterparts.
With the national average gas price sitting at $3.99 per gallon on March 28, 2026, and EV shopper consideration picking up for the first time in quarters, USA Today published its annual rundown of the safest electric vehicles on the market. The list is worth examining beyond the headlines.
What the Top Picks Tell Us
The USA Today ranking placed the 2027 Audi A6 Sportback e-tron at No. 1, followed by the 2026 Genesis GV60, Hyundai Ioniq 5, and a mix of other premium and mainstream EVs. The methodology combines NHTSA crash-test results, IIHS ratings, and the presence of advanced active safety features — lane-keeping assist, automatic emergency braking, blind-spot monitoring, and increasingly, Level 2 semi-autonomous driving systems as standard equipment.
A few patterns emerge from the full list:
Korean brands are punching well above their weight. The Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Kia EV6 — now in their updated 2026 forms — continue to post strong safety ratings across the board. Hyundai’s Highway Driving Assist 2 system, which combines adaptive cruise control with lane-centering and automated lane-change capability, comes standard on higher trims and has accumulated significant real-world data on effectiveness. The 2026 Ioniq 5’s revised chassis and updated battery management systems also address some of the early durability concerns that surfaced in the model’s first years on the road.
Genesis is no longer flying under the radar. The GV60, Genesis’s first dedicated EV, earned strong marks for its structural rigidity and its suite of standard safety tech. Parent company Hyundai’s broader push on safety — reflected across the Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis lineup — has translated into consistent IIHS Top Safety Pick designations that weren’t always a given for non-premium Korean vehicles a decade ago.
Audi and BMW continue to set the bar in premium. The Audi A6 Sportback e-tron and various BMW electric models — the iX3 was named World Car of the Year in March — benefit from the platform investments those brands have made in their EV architectures. Structural battery packaging that doubles as chassis reinforcement, multi-link rear suspensions tuned for crash energy management, and extensive use of high-strength aluminum are common threads in the top-rated vehicles.
Why Safety Ratings Are Getting Harder to Ignore in EVs
The EV purchase decision has always had layers: range, charging speed, total cost of ownership, technology, and brand. Safety is increasingly entering the conversation for a few reasons.
First, the driver-assistance technology gap between brands is wider than ever. Tesla’s Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (supervised) system, GM’s Super Cruise, Hyundai’s Highway Driving Assist, and Ford’s BlueCruise represent genuinely different approaches to semi-autonomous driving — different philosophies on sensor fusion, camera-only versus lidar, and how much control to hand back to the driver. As these systems accumulate real-world crash data, safety comparisons are becoming more than theoretical.
Second, battery fire risk — real or perceived — continues to be a concern for mainstream EV buyers. While statistical evidence suggests EV fires are less common than combustion vehicle fires per mile driven, the fear factor is real. Vehicles that have demonstrated strong battery protection architectures and thermal management systems are increasingly highlighted in safety comparisons.
Third, the profile of the first-time EV buyer has shifted. Early adopters were often enthusiastic early majority consumers who had done their homework. The mainstream buyer considering an EV today may be less technically savvy and more focused on conventional purchase criteria — including safety — than the early adopter cohort was.
The Buying Implication
If you’re cross-shopping EVs right now, the USA Today list is a reasonable starting point, but it shouldn’t be the final word. Crash-test ratings for 2026 model year vehicles are still being updated, and some newer models — the Rivian R2, the updated Nissan LEAF, the Subaru Uncharted EV — may not have accumulated enough NHTSA and IIHS data to be fully evaluated yet.
The models that made the list share a common thread: they were designed as EVs from the ground up, rather than adapted from combustion platforms. That structural advantage tends to show up in both crash-test performance and real-world safety data as the vehicles age.
Gear up for safer EV ownership:
- Tesla Supercharger NACS to CCS1 Adapter – 500A — open Tesla’s Supercharger network with your non-Tesla EV
- AMPURE Go 2 Portable EV Charger – NACS — Level 2 home charging for any NACS-equipped EV
- Lectron NACS to CCS Bundle — Level 1/2 portable charger plus Supercharger access adapter in one kit
Related reading:
- Gas Hits $4: Does It Finally Move the Needle on EV Buyers? — the market context behind rising EV consideration
- Edmunds’ Most Exciting EVs of 2026 — the most anticipated EVs beyond the safety rankings