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Comment by sschueller | Hacker News Reader

"When I post this chart I often hear Tesla believers complain it doesn’t conform to their bias because it obscures sales volumes. Does it? In fact, it is the opposite. First, volume shouldn’t cause more deaths to start with (remember more cars means more data, which means more safety). Second, Tesla doesn’t have higher volume."

I don't agree with the first part. Volume does matter doesn't it? However the first part is mute if Volvo sold more cars.

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The chart is obviously misleading. More volume would mean fewer deaths PER miles driven, but this is showing absolute numbers of deaths for ONLY electric models. Volvo has many more models besides EVs. The chart would be fair if all models were included, and if it was relative to road usage, eg. deaths per 100k miles driven.

there are direct model to model comparisons with sales numbers in the article.

And other manufactures ev sales numbers do not seem to to be off by a factor of 100 too 200 compared to tesla

Tesla’s delivery numbers are wrong. No sources listed either.

fair, the numbers seem to be off according do the numbers i can find. Tesla produced more cars then that by a factor of 2x even in q1 2021

Single year sales numbers, but for some reason the author used total deaths instead of single year deaths.

The chart does not say it is using only electric models. How do you know that? It says per BRAND not per model.

Further down, the article includes deaths relative to sales volume for various EV models. I don't see how it is unfair to compare two EVs fatality rates.

Finally, while miles driven would be great I imagine it's hard to know the average miles driven per model, but there's little reason to think it differs by orders of magnitude.

This person is clearly deluded. The correct metric is fatal accident per 100k miles driven and OF COURSE volume matters.

If volume matters then we are painting a worse situation for Tesla since they sold less than volvo

No we don't, if we compare normalised numbers (per mile driven) rather than unadjusted ones.

How do they know much miles have been driven by a car? What if a person does it own car maintenance? Not sure, if that's a much better approach

Last year (2021) Volvo sold 698693 cars, and that's including all of their models, not just electric.

Tesla sold 936222, which is obviously significantly more than Volvo.

I don't disagree. But it's a moot, not a mute, point.

It’s like a cow’s opinion, it doesn’t matter, it’s moo

It’s not moot because had Tesla had greater volume, one might be able to more easily justify the higher number of deaths. However the volume is still relatively smaller and therefore the higher number of deaths is still significant.

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