Tesla ‘spontaneously’ caught fire on highway in Sacramento County: officials

> Now, a car catching fire, especially spontaneously is almost unheard of.

It depends. In DE you hear it almost daily. There are design rules which are only taken seriously since some (5) years. And implementing them is expensive and time consuming which leads to "tailoring".

1982 is also some 80 years into production of gas driven cars with people riding in them. It can't be that people before 1981 were fine with a large possibility of getting roasted in their cars and only later did someone figure it would be good to not die in a fire because a law said so?

Also, there has been statistics on how often cars of different types burst into flames and EVs are very low in that regard. The fires are nastier, but far more common.

(random hit from googling such statistics) https://www.motorbiscuit.com/electric-vehicles-catch-fire-co...

Putting out a Mustang fire is a lot easier.

Never attribute to malice...

They were just optimised for profit. Testing is expensive, so if there is not much damage to property or human life, it can be skipped.

Not back in '82?