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I'd point out that those innuendos are based on manipulative statistics: the standard is comparing the rate of car fires, but most of those 250 million cars are

I'd point out that those innuendos are based on manipulative statistics: the standard is comparing the rate of car fires, but most of those 250 million cars are far older than Tesla Model S (decades as opposed to months old). A proper apples-to-apples comparison would look at new cars (within a year, lets say) and compare those rates.

aidos 13y ago
I know nothing about the physics of it but would that not depend on the causes of fires? I may be misunderstanding but it sounds like you're implying that fires are more likely in older cars - maybe that is actually the case (I'd be willing to believe it).
- InclinedPlane 13y ago
  Another important effect is that some cars have known defects putting them at increased risk of fire, and some of those cars are still on the road, which inflates the statistics for the average automobile.
- JshWright 13y ago
  A huge number of vehicle fires are electrical in nature. I've been a firefighter for ~10 years. Nearly every vehicle fire I've seen falls into one of three categories: 1) Deliberately set 2) Faulty/old/corroded wiring (by far the most common) 3) Some flammable material coming into contact with something really hot (commonly after an accident where a car has gone off the road into tall dry grass) Fires due to the fuel tank failing are _extremely_ rare (I've never seen one, or even heard of one in neighboring areas). It may be related to the fact that I'm in an area that uses lots of nasty stuff to deice roads, but corrosion is a major issue with vehicle electric system, and the older a vehicle is, the more likely it is to experience a 'spontaneous' fire.
codex 13y ago
Simple calculations show that the Teslas are roughly 25x more likely to catch fire in a collision, but I suspect they are much less likely to catch fire for other reasons. So just don't hit anything.
- eridius 13y ago
  What's the error rate on that? I don't think we've seen enough Teslas involved in major accidents to even begin to determine how likely they are to catch fire compared to other cars.
  - codex 13y ago
    You don't need to know the accident rate--you just need to know the rates of fire from an accident per car-year driven. Tesla doesn't have a long history here, but they do have 10K cars on the road.

aidos 13y ago

I know nothing about the physics of it but would that not depend on the causes of fires? I may be misunderstanding but it sounds like you're implying that fires are more likely in older cars - maybe that is actually the case (I'd be willing to believe it).

InclinedPlane 13y ago
Another important effect is that some cars have known defects putting them at increased risk of fire, and some of those cars are still on the road, which inflates the statistics for the average automobile.
JshWright 13y ago
A huge number of vehicle fires are electrical in nature. I've been a firefighter for ~10 years. Nearly every vehicle fire I've seen falls into one of three categories: 1) Deliberately set 2) Faulty/old/corroded wiring (by far the most common) 3) Some flammable material coming into contact with something really hot (commonly after an accident where a car has gone off the road into tall dry grass) Fires due to the fuel tank failing are _extremely_ rare (I've never seen one, or even heard of one in neighboring areas). It may be related to the fact that I'm in an area that uses lots of nasty stuff to deice roads, but corrosion is a major issue with vehicle electric system, and the older a vehicle is, the more likely it is to experience a 'spontaneous' fire.

codex 13y ago

Simple calculations show that the Teslas are roughly 25x more likely to catch fire in a collision, but I suspect they are much less likely to catch fire for other reasons. So just don't hit anything.

eridius 13y ago
What's the error rate on that? I don't think we've seen enough Teslas involved in major accidents to even begin to determine how likely they are to catch fire compared to other cars.
- codex 13y ago
  You don't need to know the accident rate--you just need to know the rates of fire from an accident per car-year driven. Tesla doesn't have a long history here, but they do have 10K cars on the road.