Yeah, a lot of those arguments, while true, are not very representative; he's comparing statistics of the 19.000 brand new cars built within the last year with the millions of road cars currently out there.
I do think the Tesla's fires have been blown way out of proportion by the media. And it's odd too; gasoline fires are much more impressive and descriptions of burning children and suchlike will create much more impressive headlines than "electrical car on fire". It's a desensitisation thing though, I think; dozens of cars (rough guess based on nothing) go up in flames every day, which is maybe noted in a local newspaper. Rare high-tech car has a fire and it's world news.
Hate to break this to you, but the internals of most "premium" vehicles when it comes to things like engines are largely unchanged year to year. I test drove a lot of premium vehicles last year and found most of them were using engines/drivetrains that were still based on 15-20 year old designs with only cosmetic (and cabin electronics) changes over the years.
So in that sense, the Model S is a baby in terms of maturity of the vehicle platform.
>>> I test drove a lot of premium vehicles last year and found most of them were using engines/drivetrains that were still based on 15-20 year old designs with only cosmetic (and cabin electronics) changes.
I'd love to know which cars you're referring to. I've been a huge BMW guy for years and they generally go on 5 year cycle with their engines and drivetrains.
For instance, on the M5 the E60 M5 used the same drivetrain and engine (with minor tweaks) from 2005-2010. Whereas the new F10 M5 engine and drivetrain was redesigned in 2011 and has yet to see any major changes in its current iteration.
I saw it across manufacturers the German manufacturers: BMW, Mercedes, and Audi.
On the Japanese side, Nissan/Infiniti abused the hell out of their 3.5L V6 in every car they made for more than a decade.
Regarding the BMW M5, the F10 is actually very similar to the F01 which came on the previous 7 series in 2008. Even the E60 was considered an upsized 3 series engine.[1]
Regardless, the point I'm trying to make is that Tesla is really trying to break new ground and needs about a decade for their vehicle platforms to mature before comparisons can be made with any of the current luxury brand. The other brands have a pedigree which goes back multiple decades so even their newer vehicles have a few decades of maturity baked into them.
True, the fires per 1000 vehicle number would be more indicative of the chance of experiencing one in your choice of vehicles. And then he leaves out the fact that gasoline powered cars have caught fire idling in traffic (my sister's MG did that, but its fuel pump was a not exactly the best engineered part of that car) and during non-collision activities. Its about 1/week on the Bay Area highways you have a car fire reported during the commute.
That said, he had to say something. The press was enjoying the chance to bash 'the safest car ever tested' and the stock price was falling from unsustainable highs.
There are so many factors to take into consideration that the argument would be a book to get a full view...
For example, if you want to move past generalizations (such as the author of the blog post made) you would also have to consider things such as the type of people using the cars vs other premium vehicles. Likely Tesla users are going to be more apt to try more things, which in turn makes them at a higher risk to drive erratically or at higher speeds (even perhaps higher than other premium vehicle users).
Further, I would suspect premium vehicles have a higher rate of deaths due to accident than the average population of car. However, that data might not be available to him.
Lets also compare the amount of people that die/injured because their isn't a sufficient crumple zone to absorb impact and that can prevent the doors from jamming, due to having an ICE in the front. Lets compare how many people die/injured from a vehicle rolling over because it has a higher center of gravity. We kind of just put up with these things which are more of a design flaw that has serious consequences. Model S are much safer in these areas yet we are concerned with road debris fires. I wish Tesla would make more safety features standard such as front/back sensors+camera, collision warning, adaptive cruise, blind spot warning, etc. The car of the future should be safe and prevent needless death.
> So the fire rate should be compared to those of premium vehicles about the same age.
While it's fair to want to compare the Tesla to good cars, rather than average ones, arbitrarily selecting criteria like that creates statistical fallacies rather than eliminating them. If we care about safety, we should compare each car's safety to an average replacement, rather than trying to sculpt a population with an ill-defined criterion like 'premium'. So far Tesla has presented the data necessary to compare them to an average car, so all you have to do to see where it stacks up is to find similar data for any particular car you think is comparable.
I ran the numbers in a previous thread and got numbers that contradict their claim. There's a car fire roughly every 3 minutes (rounding down; it's actually a bit over 3 minutes). In the 500-something days since the Tesla has been released, there have been a total of 3 fires.
If you want more fun, run the traffic fatality rates since June 22, 2012. Tesla is currently sitting at zero (it would be highly unrealistic to expect that to last).
The fire rate should be compared to those of premium electric vehicles about the same age... which don't exist. Not even Fisker or i3 would qualify if you restrict the criteria far enough. I think they should limit it to the same colour only as well.
Model S is only 1 year old and it's a premium vehicle. So the fire rate should be compared to those of premium vehicles about the same age.