I wonder if auto manufacturers are starting fires as a sort of false flag operation against the good name of Tesla. It absolutely makes no sense that a fender bender would engulf the car in flames.
The driver safely pulled over to the side of the road and yet the car is in the middle of an intersection with the hood engulfed in flames. Check for accelerant.
They just DoS'ed the entire Federal government and put the full faith and credit of the government in doubt by risking default.
It's not exactly a stretch of imagination that the same kinds of people or organizations might also have the motivation, means and willingness to try it against one particular website: the website associated with the very same law, the ACA, which was their ostensible reason for DoS-ing the US government itself.
And note for those who can't make distinctions. There's a difference between whether parties were attempting to DoS the website, versus whether it was successful. Also it's entirely possible and reasonable that a DoS attack could result in being a partial contributor, though obviously not the sole cause of its woes. Distinctions. Shades of gray. Life. It's subtle that way.
After an October accident, a burning Tesla Model S was captured on video by a passerby.
That was definitely the battery. It was triggered by debris on the highway striking the undercarriage and penetrating the 6mm armour plate surrounding the battery. They had to flip the car on its side (while it was burning), drill holes into the car to access the battery packs, and only then could put it out.
exactly. considering the batteries are down on the bottom of the vehicle. The front hood area has an open trunk beneath. Air, by default as shipped. So what's inside that particular car's trunk?
I wasn't actually suggesting anything conspiratorial, just curious about what was on fire i.e. bits of metal don't catch fire that easily but obviously there's something under a car hood that does.
>It absolutely makes no sense that a fender bender would engulf the car in flames.
How can you possibly make such a claim? Are you intimately familiar with the design of the Model S? Have you performed some level of engineering analysis on these three cars post crash? If you really believe that a conspiracy is more likely than a design flaw then I don't know what to say to you.
Corruption on this level only existed 50+ years ago. Nowadays our politicians, popes and corporations would never do what they'd did in the 20th century.
>The driver safely pulled over to the side of the road and yet the car is in the middle of an intersection with the hood engulfed in flames. Check for accelerant.
Per the caption that's a picture of a difference car...
That's not the fairest of comparisons. It'd be like saying only 7% of jet crashes happen because of a malfunction in the vicinity of the cockpit but 100% of hot air balloon crashes happen because of a malfunction in the vicinity of the cockpit. Just because the concentration of failures is on one component doesn't mean the component if generally defective; in this case it just (potentially) means there's fewer components.
no, you are missing the point. the battery is not defective. the battery system is just more likely to catch fire when compromised. petrol fuel systems are not only more protected from damage (typically, behind the second axle) but also just less likely to catch fire (on the hwy)[1]. You generally need both a puncture and a spark. A battery shorts with Just a puncture by something metal (usually), so there is one less logical step.
[1] High-pressure fuel lines are well protected outside of the battery, also (they are small) en route to the intake manifold. Here, the EFI rail is also behind the engine block and not likely to take a direct impact. Even then, they are flexible and not likly to break (they would bend).
Where did it say this was a "minor fender bender"? This article doesn't have much detail, but the first fire was a result of a large chunk of metal on the road levering up and stabbing into the engine compartment. I have no doubt that the exact same incidence with a gas-powered car could have had a significantly worse result than the contained fire the Tesla experienced.
Given the fact that the article is vague, you should definitely "have doubt", but you're right; I was thinking about the first crash. I overstated that by a mile.
The second crash in Mexico definitely was not.
“This was a significant accident where the car was traveling at such a high speed that it smashed through a concrete wall and then hit a large tree, yet the driver walked away from the car with no permanent injury.”
Given a normalization of usage, period of ownership, driving habits, and maintenance: do they have a different rate of fires that is statistically significant.
I don't know the answer, but that's the question you should be "just asking".
(152,300 fires per year) / (6 months) = 25,383 automobile fires based on data from 2006-2010
U.S. fire departments responded to an estimated average of 152,300 automobile fires per year in 2006-2010. These fires caused an average of 209 civilian deaths, 764 civilian injuries, and $536 million in direct property damage.
Facts and Figures
- Automobile fires were involved in 10% of reported U.S. fires, 6% of U.S. fire deaths.
- On average, 17 automobile fires were reported per hour. These fires killed an average of four people every week.
- Mechanical or electrical failures or malfunctions were factors in roughly two-thirds of the automobile fires.
- Collisions and overturns were factors in only 4% of highway vehicle fires, but these incidents accounted for three of every five (60%) automobile fire deaths.
- Only 2% of automobile fires began in fuel tanks or fuel lines, but these incidents caused 15% of the automobile fire deaths.
about 80% involve cars in parking lots, at rest, in repair shops, etc. So, you need to adjust the data. of the 152k, only a subset [~26k] were on public highways. Once you do this, a tsla now has 3x (300%) the chance of a normal car in catching fire in a highway accident, when corrected for miles driven, etc.
Care to share your calculations? They're quite the reverse of my back-of-the-envelope, which rounds to an egregious degree, and doesn't take into account the subset on public highways or not:
150,000 fires / 250mm total cars in america: ~ .0006
3 fires / 20,000 Teslas (their expectation for this year: ~.00015 (4x fewer fires)
I'm not sure whether we should care that gas cars catch fire in parking lots rather than highways... it seems like a huge concern regardless.
You need to adjust your data down to 26k hwy fires and correct for milage driven. For a comparison even to how tesla cites the data, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6499111
I'm not sure whether we should care that gas cars catch fire in parking lots rather than highways...
These vehicles are typically not occupied. So from a driver and passenger safety perspective...you really should care.
>> I wonder how many gas-fueled car fires have there been in the last two months... just asking.
Contrary to popular belief (and maybe common sense), gas-fueled cars rarely catch fire because of the gas in the tank. You'd need a gas leak and some form of external ignition, which rarely occur together. Apparenly with a battery-powered car, all you need is piercing damage to the battery.
Between 2006 and 2010 there were on average 152,300 automobile fires per year [1] so a reasonable estimate for 2 months would be 25,383. There are approximately 19,000 Tesla Model S sedans on the road [2]. If we assume most of those vehicles are in the US, then the Tesla model S represents 0.007469% of the 254.4 million passenger vehicles in the US [3]. One would expect 1.8 Tesla Model S fires in a 2 month period if the chances of a fire are no different for the Model S than other vehicles. But, this calculation doesn't take into account several other mitigating factors, for example if fires are more common in older cars than new cars.
Right now they sell very expensive, exclusive cars. Are they going to sell more commonly accessible models or production of such cars is prohibitively costly?
The plan is to provide a car for the every day man. Each new car they come out with will have a larger appeal than the previous one for the foreseeable future.
But they'd be competing against the Nissan Leaf (The Model S costs about as much as two Leafs). I think the way car manufacturers see it, it's a little early for electric cars. The Leaf has the market more or less saturated (and they're not selling that many cars). I'm sure Toyota and Honda had electric cars in the pipeline and will flood the market once it becomes viable (ie. when a good battery/range becomes affordable).
What Tesla has that the others don't (at the moment!) are the charging stations. That may make them more competitive.
I expect in the time between now and the BlueStar, Nissan will have a PHV priced in the same range as a subcompact. The Leaf is very cost-effective given its current charge range.
Plug in Hybrids? My gues is that they will not be around for long. The beauty of the Leaf is that it's so fundamentally simple. A battery, some electronics and an electric motor. It's fundamentally so much more reliable and simple than a combustion engine vehicle.
By the time the BlueStar will come out, Nissan will have better prices and ranges available.
Full-electric might have an audience, but I make regular road trips to Chattanooga and Birmingham. The charger station infrastructure is simply not there yet for 100+ mile commutes on the interstates. By the time the BlueStar comes out, I could be totally wrong. I'm completely expecting to be.
Tesla, Apple, Google, etc... They're sexy, and in the public mind, so they drive traffic. Media used to be about information, but now it's about clicks and link bait.
Far from it: Tesla was the one that came out and said they had the safest car on the road. Even when NHTSA said it wasn't appropriate, Tesla flaunted a 5.4 star rating. Tesla supporters came out and said the first fire was a fluke. They came out and said the second is a fluke. Now the third time is a conspiracy?
It's possible that there's an engineering flaw or issue with new components that underlies the problem. That is a possibility. To deny it is to be delusional. We don't know what's wrong yet, and denying the problem exists prolongs the discovery process
I have seen two car fires since July commuting from my new job. They didnt make it to HN or even on my local news.
This isnt like the Ford Explorer fiasco from years ago. 3 cars burnt, how many burn from gas everyday. Those cars dont have a warning system to tell the driver to get out, thats what the smoke is for.
PR drive by the big three auto firms. Possibly the oil companies too. Tesla is starting to become a threat.
I imagine the extent of the flurry of news reporting correlates to the dollars spent on advertising in each individual outlet.
It's painfully clear from the tenor of the writing and the selection of facts that they are trying to paint Teslas as being unsafe, un-roadworthy and electric cars as being a bad idea in general.
"It seems like the media is trying to find anything to publicly put them down."
The media will put anyone or anything down even if they love them. Just ask any of the Kennedys.
And when they are done doing that (after they have milked all they can) they will then progress to analysis and stories on "the story" - why it was done - was it fair to do so. Etc. In other words coverage on the coverage. And if there was no coverage there will be stories on why there is no coverage and how the issue should but wasn't covered.
It did indeed! But they recalled them as they were dangerous at fault, it was to do with some of the glue if I remember rightly.
It should definitely be taken seriously, but Tesla have put their cars through the NCAP testing which does check to see if they set on fire after an accident. I'd wager there's a specific defect that effects a number, but a lot of the articles have made it out as if you're driving a ticking time bomb.
Sometimes I get a nagging suspicion that there's a secret cabal of short-investors hyping and egging on these stories through PR chains in the media. On the plus side, I missed out on buying TSLA when it was cheap, maybe I'll get the chance again!
CNet is showing the first fire. Keep in mind the model s has a 12 volt battery right behind the nose. It is in a much more vulnerable spot then the main battery pack.
Regardless of how you feel about Tesla, or whether you believe these articles are PR pieces written by oil shills, this is just bad journalism.
Good journalism would give us any piece of the following information:
- The number of fires in Tesla vehicles compared to:
- other gas-powered cars in the same vehicle class
- other electric cars in the same vehicle class
- overall vehicle fire statistics in the country
- A possible explanation as to what mechanism in Tesla vehicles causes fires like
this.
- Some brief exploration of how concerns about Tesla's safety standards might affect
its broader offering, brand, and stock price.
Instead, we get:
Whether the latest news will have any lasting effect on public perceptions is doubtful. But it offered more fodder for bears who have been dumping Tesla shares since the company reported third-quarter earnings earlier this week. Tesla's stock has been on a tear most of the year but in the last month has lost more than 20 percent of its value.
Wait, sorry, was I trying to be impartial at the beginning of this comment? This is pure shill journalism. The big three are scared. Ignore them.
"Good journalism" would have the requisite "to be sure" info such as you mentioned in "any piece" above.
Problem with that is if there is enough of that you end up with a story that has no punch and it becomes "why is this newsworthy then". Not to mention doing that is also more work. So you've basically given people a reason why the story you are writing doesn't matter.
Musk argued that TSLA was 5x less likely than a petrol car to catch fire on the freeway. That math does not hold up. At the time, TSLA was approximately equally (1x) likely to catch fire under these circumstances. Given two more datapoints, that data is now TSLA is 3x more likely to catch fire, not 5x less likely than a standard car in a fwy accident.
The real reason for flagging is not the supposed criticism, but the level of bias and falsehood in the article.
^^^That has to be a joke.
__________
"For consumers concerned about fire risk, there should be absolutely zero doubt that it is safer to power a car with a battery than a large tank of highly flammable liquid," Tesla CEO Elon Musk wrote on a company blog in early October.
The greates example of "the level of bias and falsehood in the article" seems to be this gem. The rest of the posted article is just a news report on the existence of a fire with a link to a picture.[1]
I was not talking about this particulate article( i should have added suffix s to article ), but just my opinion why some articles are quickly flagged of the site.
While I may be wrong on this one, it is still my honest opinion, and I would prefer less aggressive approach in my replyers.
Just to point out, the analysis I did above is the same anlaysis the Elon Musk did. It is using the same data. I just read his data source slightly more carefully. Then, the next step was just to reflect the news in this article. Nothing in what i just described contradicts your "opinion why some articles are quickly flagged of the site." The issue at hand is your premise is false. The article is a simple news story with a singular data point: what was (1) is now (3). We don't need to do any hand-wavy analysis. We just stick in these numbers and we have a pretty glaring inconsistency. Its not "a bias and falshood" because it uses the same framework (so no bias is added) with a single observed data point that nobody is debating (so no falshood).
There are about 150,000 car fires in the US per year [1]. Tesla is on pace for about 12 fires per year (1 per month, as one of these three fires happened in Mexico). There are probably ~15,000 total Teslas on the Road in the US, out of about 200 million cars.
On the surface, Tesla has .8 fires per 1000 vehicles, where as .75 fires per 1000 vehicles is the US average.
Great link. I was looking for some actual figures, but hadn't found anything yet.
The best measure of fire 'likelihood' is probably the incidence per vehicle mile driven, because it captures actual utilization. Right now, the total number for 2003-2007 was 90 highway vehicle fires per billion miles driven. (http://www.nfpa.org/research/statistical-reports/vehicles/ve...)
The question remains: what is that number for the Tesla Model S? So far we know of 3 fires. The last piece of the puzzle is how many miles have the Model S cars driven?
The average annual miles driven for all vehicles is about 13,000 (http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/onh00/bar8.htm). Assuming driving habits are identical between Tesla owners and non-Tesla owners, we can get a rough upper limit of 195 million miles driven (the actual number is less because most model S owners have had their vehicle for less than one year). Back of the envelope calculations show that comes out to 65 million miles per fire (rough upper limit), without additional fires. Given the above data on all vehicles, similar reporting shows that the average vehicle goes about 11.1 million miles per fire.
Assumptions and research issues:
Vehicle fire data for 2003-2007 has not significantly changed
150,000 gasoline car fires per year / three trillion miles driven per year = one fire per 20 million miles driven for ICEs.
three Model S car fires / 100 million miles of Model S driving = one fire per 33 million miles driven for the Model S.
I'm assuming someone was injured in a car fire last year, and so far no one has been injured in a Tesla fire. So far, then, Tesla Model S fires occur on average 50% less, and are some non-zero amount safer when they do occur.
What's the age breakdown on those fires? That is, if you just look at cars of a similar age to the Model S, how does that affect the number of car fires? I wouldn't be surprised if most of those fires are in cars far older than any currently-existing Model S.
Fair, but lots of fires are from internal issues. I think only 60% of car fires are due to collisions. All three Tesla fires were from collisions. You'd have to have more data than my attention span will allow to calculate whether the collision-to-fire ratio is higher in a Tesla than a ICE vehicle.
You'd need the total number of collisions, and the percentage of those that resulted in a fire.
You'd likely have to do some analysis about driving habits too. Perhaps limit the data to comparable luxury cars. People bombing around in a luxury car likely have different collision rates than the average Joe. More because the car is faster? Fewer because the care more about the vehicle? I don't know...
With this small number of fires, you can't get meaningful comparative statistics between Tesla's and Petrol powered cars yet. Variance is too high with this small number of incidents/cars on the road.
89 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 153 ms ] threadThe driver safely pulled over to the side of the road and yet the car is in the middle of an intersection with the hood engulfed in flames. Check for accelerant.
It's not exactly a stretch of imagination that the same kinds of people or organizations might also have the motivation, means and willingness to try it against one particular website: the website associated with the very same law, the ACA, which was their ostensible reason for DoS-ing the US government itself.
And note for those who can't make distinctions. There's a difference between whether parties were attempting to DoS the website, versus whether it was successful. Also it's entirely possible and reasonable that a DoS attack could result in being a partial contributor, though obviously not the sole cause of its woes. Distinctions. Shades of gray. Life. It's subtle that way.
Ah, Lithium...
That was definitely the battery. It was triggered by debris on the highway striking the undercarriage and penetrating the 6mm armour plate surrounding the battery. They had to flip the car on its side (while it was burning), drill holes into the car to access the battery packs, and only then could put it out.
How can you possibly make such a claim? Are you intimately familiar with the design of the Model S? Have you performed some level of engineering analysis on these three cars post crash? If you really believe that a conspiracy is more likely than a design flaw then I don't know what to say to you.
Per the caption that's a picture of a difference car...
If this fire was battery related, we are now at 100% for TSLA
[1] On public highways.
[1] High-pressure fuel lines are well protected outside of the battery, also (they are small) en route to the intake manifold. Here, the EFI rail is also behind the engine block and not likely to take a direct impact. Even then, they are flexible and not likly to break (they would bend).
Where did it say this was a "minor fender bender"? This article doesn't have much detail, but the first fire was a result of a large chunk of metal on the road levering up and stabbing into the engine compartment. I have no doubt that the exact same incidence with a gas-powered car could have had a significantly worse result than the contained fire the Tesla experienced.
The second crash in Mexico definitely was not. “This was a significant accident where the car was traveling at such a high speed that it smashed through a concrete wall and then hit a large tree, yet the driver walked away from the car with no permanent injury.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-28/tesla-says-model-s-...
Given a normalization of usage, period of ownership, driving habits, and maintenance: do they have a different rate of fires that is statistically significant.
I don't know the answer, but that's the question you should be "just asking".
(152,300 fires per year) / (6 months) = 25,383 automobile fires based on data from 2006-2010
U.S. fire departments responded to an estimated average of 152,300 automobile fires per year in 2006-2010. These fires caused an average of 209 civilian deaths, 764 civilian injuries, and $536 million in direct property damage.
Facts and Figures
- Automobile fires were involved in 10% of reported U.S. fires, 6% of U.S. fire deaths.
- On average, 17 automobile fires were reported per hour. These fires killed an average of four people every week.
- Mechanical or electrical failures or malfunctions were factors in roughly two-thirds of the automobile fires.
- Collisions and overturns were factors in only 4% of highway vehicle fires, but these incidents accounted for three of every five (60%) automobile fire deaths.
- Only 2% of automobile fires began in fuel tanks or fuel lines, but these incidents caused 15% of the automobile fire deaths.
Source: http://www.nfpa.org/safety-information/for-consumers/vehicle...
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6499111
150,000 fires / 250mm total cars in america: ~ .0006
3 fires / 20,000 Teslas (their expectation for this year: ~.00015 (4x fewer fires)
I'm not sure whether we should care that gas cars catch fire in parking lots rather than highways... it seems like a huge concern regardless.
I'm not sure whether we should care that gas cars catch fire in parking lots rather than highways...
These vehicles are typically not occupied. So from a driver and passenger safety perspective...you really should care.
Contrary to popular belief (and maybe common sense), gas-fueled cars rarely catch fire because of the gas in the tank. You'd need a gas leak and some form of external ignition, which rarely occur together. Apparenly with a battery-powered car, all you need is piercing damage to the battery.
Between 2006 and 2010 there were on average 152,300 automobile fires per year [1] so a reasonable estimate for 2 months would be 25,383. There are approximately 19,000 Tesla Model S sedans on the road [2]. If we assume most of those vehicles are in the US, then the Tesla model S represents 0.007469% of the 254.4 million passenger vehicles in the US [3]. One would expect 1.8 Tesla Model S fires in a 2 month period if the chances of a fire are no different for the Model S than other vehicles. But, this calculation doesn't take into account several other mitigating factors, for example if fires are more common in older cars than new cars.
[1] http://www.nfpa.org/safety-information/for-consumers/vehicle...
[2] http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/05/tesla-q3-2013-earnings/
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_vehicles_in_the_Unite...
But they'd be competing against the Nissan Leaf (The Model S costs about as much as two Leafs). I think the way car manufacturers see it, it's a little early for electric cars. The Leaf has the market more or less saturated (and they're not selling that many cars). I'm sure Toyota and Honda had electric cars in the pipeline and will flood the market once it becomes viable (ie. when a good battery/range becomes affordable).
What Tesla has that the others don't (at the moment!) are the charging stations. That may make them more competitive.
By the time the BlueStar will come out, Nissan will have better prices and ranges available.
It seems like the media is trying to find anything to publicly put them down.
http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/elon-musk-boeing-7...
It's possible that there's an engineering flaw or issue with new components that underlies the problem. That is a possibility. To deny it is to be delusional. We don't know what's wrong yet, and denying the problem exists prolongs the discovery process
In the time between these three Tesla fires, there have been hundreds of conventional car fires.
Even per capita, conventional vehicle fires are much higher.
The difference here is every single Tesla fire is newsworthy.
This isnt like the Ford Explorer fiasco from years ago. 3 cars burnt, how many burn from gas everyday. Those cars dont have a warning system to tell the driver to get out, thats what the smoke is for.
I imagine the extent of the flurry of news reporting correlates to the dollars spent on advertising in each individual outlet.
It's painfully clear from the tenor of the writing and the selection of facts that they are trying to paint Teslas as being unsafe, un-roadworthy and electric cars as being a bad idea in general.
Relevant: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
The media will put anyone or anything down even if they love them. Just ask any of the Kennedys.
And when they are done doing that (after they have milked all they can) they will then progress to analysis and stories on "the story" - why it was done - was it fair to do so. Etc. In other words coverage on the coverage. And if there was no coverage there will be stories on why there is no coverage and how the issue should but wasn't covered.
My point is that I don't think it's anti-electric bias that is causing to people to take their vehicle catching on fire pretty seriously.
It should definitely be taken seriously, but Tesla have put their cars through the NCAP testing which does check to see if they set on fire after an accident. I'd wager there's a specific defect that effects a number, but a lot of the articles have made it out as if you're driving a ticking time bomb.
CNet is showing the first fire. Keep in mind the model s has a 12 volt battery right behind the nose. It is in a much more vulnerable spot then the main battery pack.
Good journalism would give us any piece of the following information:
Instead, we get:Whether the latest news will have any lasting effect on public perceptions is doubtful. But it offered more fodder for bears who have been dumping Tesla shares since the company reported third-quarter earnings earlier this week. Tesla's stock has been on a tear most of the year but in the last month has lost more than 20 percent of its value.
Wait, sorry, was I trying to be impartial at the beginning of this comment? This is pure shill journalism. The big three are scared. Ignore them.
Problem with that is if there is enough of that you end up with a story that has no punch and it becomes "why is this newsworthy then". Not to mention doing that is also more work. So you've basically given people a reason why the story you are writing doesn't matter.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6499111
Musk argued that TSLA was 5x less likely than a petrol car to catch fire on the freeway. That math does not hold up. At the time, TSLA was approximately equally (1x) likely to catch fire under these circumstances. Given two more datapoints, that data is now TSLA is 3x more likely to catch fire, not 5x less likely than a standard car in a fwy accident.
That actually seems like news.
________
82. Tesla: Third Model S fire ...(cnet.com)
32 points by .... 1 hour ago | flag | 68 comments
^^^That has to be a joke.
__________
"For consumers concerned about fire risk, there should be absolutely zero doubt that it is safer to power a car with a battery than a large tank of highly flammable liquid," Tesla CEO Elon Musk wrote on a company blog in early October.
The greates example of "the level of bias and falsehood in the article" seems to be this gem. The rest of the posted article is just a news report on the existence of a fire with a link to a picture.[1]
[1] compare: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-28/tesla-says-model-s-... The CNET guy is not guilty of selectively reading safety reports and pushing misleading stats to the public. That language was a quote from Tesla...
Ditto.
I was not talking about this particulate article( i should have added suffix s to article ), but just my opinion why some articles are quickly flagged of the site.
While I may be wrong on this one, it is still my honest opinion, and I would prefer less aggressive approach in my replyers.
On the surface, Tesla has .8 fires per 1000 vehicles, where as .75 fires per 1000 vehicles is the US average.
[1] http://www.nfpa.org/safety-information/for-consumers/vehicle...
The best measure of fire 'likelihood' is probably the incidence per vehicle mile driven, because it captures actual utilization. Right now, the total number for 2003-2007 was 90 highway vehicle fires per billion miles driven. (http://www.nfpa.org/research/statistical-reports/vehicles/ve...)
The question remains: what is that number for the Tesla Model S? So far we know of 3 fires. The last piece of the puzzle is how many miles have the Model S cars driven?
The average annual miles driven for all vehicles is about 13,000 (http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/onh00/bar8.htm). Assuming driving habits are identical between Tesla owners and non-Tesla owners, we can get a rough upper limit of 195 million miles driven (the actual number is less because most model S owners have had their vehicle for less than one year). Back of the envelope calculations show that comes out to 65 million miles per fire (rough upper limit), without additional fires. Given the above data on all vehicles, similar reporting shows that the average vehicle goes about 11.1 million miles per fire.
Assumptions and research issues:
Vehicle fire data for 2003-2007 has not significantly changed
There are 15,000 Model S's on the road (http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/20/teslamotors-result...)
Tesla owners drive the national average of 13,000 miles per year in their Model S's, and have had their cars for an average of one year.
If the fire issue is systemic, the rate of fires will go up, and that is not captured here.
three Model S car fires / 100 million miles of Model S driving = one fire per 33 million miles driven for the Model S.
I'm assuming someone was injured in a car fire last year, and so far no one has been injured in a Tesla fire. So far, then, Tesla Model S fires occur on average 50% less, and are some non-zero amount safer when they do occur.
Sounds pretty OK to me...
You'd need the total number of collisions, and the percentage of those that resulted in a fire.
You'd likely have to do some analysis about driving habits too. Perhaps limit the data to comparable luxury cars. People bombing around in a luxury car likely have different collision rates than the average Joe. More because the car is faster? Fewer because the care more about the vehicle? I don't know...