All of which means nothing if you are a firefighter trying extract someone from a crashed car. Tesla or no Tesla, it is still a car. It will be involved in accidents. It will crash. Someone will be trapped and someone will attempt to extract them.
There are certain scenarios that, although exceedingly rare, must still be contemplated. We cannot have a car from which firefighters cannot safely extract people. Even it only ever happens once in the next century, we aren't going to leave that person inside the car to die.
Well... we already did. https://www.autoblog.com/2019/02/25/fatal-tesla-model-s-cras...
People at the scene tried to break the windows, but the fire got too hot and they were forced to leave the man behind and get smoked inside of the fire.
People are already dead because they were unable to be extracted from a damaged Tesla S. The only question now is how will Firefighters respond to the NEXT crash, and will they be prepared this time?
Also, Tesla probably should change the design of their cars to make for better emergency extractions, to minimize this risk. Obviously, doors and stuff will break and become unable to open during a crash situation. But when you have electronic handles that pop up and very confusing instructions for "emergency door" things in your manual (open the side compartment, look for a particularly colored wire, and pull on it? That's too complex, most people won't be able to do that while suffering from a concussion + fearing for the fire that's engulfing them).
Falcon Wing doors / Fancy handles are all fun and games until you consider the crash + burning situation. It really does make for a difficult extraction.
Sure, Tesla's cars are generally very safe, but there is more than one way to measure safety, and Tesla doesn't always win.
Stop spreading blatant falsehoods.
https://www.autonews.com/article/20181009/OEM/310099923/u-s-...
“A 5-star rating is the highest safety rating a vehicle can achieve,” the agency said in the statement, which did not name Tesla. “NHTSA does not distinguish safety performance beyond that rating, thus there is no ‘safest’ vehicle among those vehicles achieving 5-star ratings.”
Citation please. This directly contradicts the anecdotal experience of literally everyone I know who deals with crashed vehicles (10 < sample size < 20, ~66% tow truck drivers). Compared to other EVs Teslas definitely seem to be the most flammable. Everyone who handles crashed cars seems to regard a mangled Tesla as a hot potato unlike a Prius, Leaf or ICE car.
The NHTSA stuff and crash safety I believe, that's well documented by reputable sources (e.g the NHTSA). Nobody except Tesla and their fan-base seems to be saying EVs are less flammable on a per crash basis though and even then nobody says point blank that crashing a Tesla is less likely to result in fire than crashing something else.
Edit: I am specifically talking about the likelihood of fire per serious crash. Not average number of fires per vehicle or per mile.
[1] https://i.redd.it/h7qse91ostt21.png
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/bg2rib/are_tes...
Disclaimer: Model S, X Owner
To control I would want to see what % of Tesla crashes catch fire compared to ICE crashes.
> This is misleading, the average vehicle on the road is much older than a tesla. You should represent the data showing in rate of fires per model year
EVs have no ignitable fluids, nor hot surfaces to ignite those fluids. Ergo, their risk of spontaneous combustion during operating goes down drastically. I concede they may still catch fire after an accident severe enough to breech the battery; this is not preventable due to the energy storage requirements of a light vehicle, combustion-based or otherwise.
No one is parroting Tesla's marketing (I'm unsure where they even market "our cars don't catch fire" explicitly), and the only way to accurately make a determination will be to wait until the average vehicle age of the EV fleet arrives at parity to the existing internal combustion fleet (as you mention in your own comment [1]).
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20190711204039/https://news.ycom...
But saying "the risk is not yet quantifiable" isn't that exciting of a discussion topic.
What the engineers and scientists at the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration have to say:
"Regarding the risk of electrochemical failure, [this] report concludes that the propensity and severity of fires and explosions from the accidental ignition of flammable electrolytic solvents used in Li-ion battery systems are anticipated to be somewhat comparable to or perhaps slightly less than those for gasoline or diesel vehicular fuels. The overall consequences for Li-ion batteries are expected to be less because of the much smaller amounts of flammable solvent released and burning in a catastrophic failure situation."
Like anything else, it's a risk discussion, and there is no simple answer. Tesla's are generally safe, as are gasoline vehicles, and there are risks and considerations that first responders need to train for, just like any vehicle chassis.
Source: https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.dot.gov/files/documents/12...
"Tesla vehicle fires are exceptionally rare events, and in some cases, there have been zero Tesla vehicle fires in a quarter. That means that an increase from one fire per quarter to two per quarter represents an increase of 100%. In order to avoid misinterpretation of these numbers and provide a meaningful comparison to industry data, Tesla will publish an update to vehicle fire data annually.
From 2012 – 2018, there has been approximately one Tesla vehicle fire for every 170 million miles traveled. By comparison, data from the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) and U.S. Department of Transportation shows that in the United States there is a vehicle fire for every 19 million miles traveled.
In order to provide an apt comparison to NFPA data, Tesla’s data set includes instances of vehicle fires caused by structure fires, arson, and other things unrelated to the vehicle, which account for about 15% of Tesla vehicle fires over this time period."