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Comment by techstrategist | Hacker News Reader

I don’t think it’s rational to compare to overall highway vehicle fires. Wouldn’t you want to compare against similar luxury vehicles of a similar age?

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I'm not a fan of all of Tesla's management practices, but this does seem to be a bit of a knee jerk reaction. One company has less than 1% of all fires for the industry, and with a component with known combustibility.

Even if the electronics failed, leaving the driver stuck inside, you would think the owners would have the foresight to either have something capable of breaking windows or a method by which to break them.

I don't think this is true: "you would think the owners would have the foresight to either have something capable of breaking windows".

Of course it's not true. People don't even read the owners manual, or care about how anything in their car works. The amount of times I've shown somebody a feature they didn't know about in their own car is staggering.

So what you're stating is, the owners seem to carry most of the liability.

In an ICE car fuel and ignition sources are generally separate there's little to be gained by being unsafe with fuel.

In an EV your fuel and ignition sources are fundamentally inseparable and you can gain a lot (range/capacity, charge time/peak power) by being unsafe with it (running the battery to the ragged edge of what it can tolerate).

The fact that in response they quickly rolled out an update that neutered a large amount of capacity is far more interesting than the fires themselves and probably what the NHTSA wants to look into.

Still OP is right, compare Tesla with similar car of price and age , there is a cool book "How to lie with statistics" that shows you how easy it is to manipulate with bad statistics though I am sure many Tesla fans spread this wrong statistics due to ignorance and not intentionally.

I guess what I've learned in these comments is that people don't think the Tesla cars have manual, emergency use only, door releases.. Which they do.

I am not sure why you responded to me, is it because I accused some people of using bad statistics so you try to deflect it ?

It is pretty clear though, Tesla has expensive new cars you need to compare them with similar cars.

If you get in a crash severe enough to damage the battery pack, then the crash is probably severe enough to render your doors inoperable.

Also, lithium cells just need to be punctured to catch fire, they don't need an external ignition source.

Are the doors not mechanical? That would seem dangerous.

I was in a significant crash when I was 10 years old, and had to kick the opposite-side rear door to get me and my younger sibling out of the burning vehicle. The latch still worked, but the body panel was heavily dented by the collision.

The 1% only makes sense by normalizing for cars on the road and even better for distance driven. Otherwise it is not telling much.

And the only car I had in my live that has something to break a car window from the inside is my 4x4. And that only because the previous owner used it extensively for off-roading. So quite the opposite from your average Tesla.

> Even if the electronics failed, leaving the driver stuck inside, you would think the owners would have the foresight to either have something capable of breaking windows or a method by which to break them.

Just for clarification, all Tesla vehicles, Model X included, have a manual pull to open the door even in the case that the power is dead. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01lXcD_Uz74

That looks awful! Especially for the rear doors, which don't have a mechanical opener on one model.

Basic design should mean that familiar methods work in an emergency. People often follow the usual way out of a building, even if there's a closer fire exit.

I just wrote above, but I was trapped in a burning car when I was a kid. The door latch worked, but I had to hold it open and kick the door to unjam it after a collision.

Had it been a Tesla, would I have known about unclipping the speaker grill, or finding a small tag to pull on at night? And been able to kick the door at the same time?

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