Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Tesla car fires....enough is enough media

Time for the soapbox/rant stool. There has been a lot of media attention about the three Tesla Model S fires. Most of the articles I've read are trying to make the car appear unsafe and by extension all electric cars are unsafe. The most recent article by CNN actually has great support for EV's in the article even though the style it was written in tends towards the anti EV side of the fence.

The great thing about the article is the numbers:

3 Tesla fires in 19,000 vehicles or about 1/6300.

Annually in the US there are 172,500 vehicle fires (Car B Que's) or about 1/1450 cars.

The Tesla fires resulted in no fire in the actual cabin of the vehicle and no injuries. That is compared to 300 deaths and 800 injuries to ICE carbequeues.

All the car fires I have personally witnessed in my lifetime have been parked cars or cars that were not involved in a collision and were off the side of the road. I have seen over 5 car fires in my life and none of them were electric cars.

Let's be honest, there are cars on the road that have no business running. They are rusted, poorly maintained and are really accidents waiting to happen. That fact does impact the numbers for ICE fires.

From the movie I Robot - Susan Calvin: [about Spooner's motorcycle] Please tell me this doesn't run on gas! Gas explodes, you know?

Signing off for today
KSNOGAS
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