I found this to be a mildly frustrating article (along with others that came up at a brief search). It seems to mix a headline grabbing issue (flames! like a flamethrower!!) that they don't actually check the stats on with a more serious possible design flaw and then layer some irritating hyperbole on top. A big line on the fire part of this story is in the middle, with the article stating:

>"Tesla has argued its cars are 10 times less likely to catch fire than gasoline vehicles, citing data from the National Fire Protection Association and U.S. Federal Highway Administration on the number of incidents by mileage traveled for its fleet of electric cars vs. other vehicles. Tesla said in 2018 that its vehicles had five fires per billion miles traveled, vs. 55 fires per billion miles traveled in the United States."

And that's just... there. There's no follow up, the author doesn't at all dig into the stats, whether Tesla is right or wrong, confounding factors or whatever, it reads like they wrote out this piece and some editor forced them to stick in "the other side" that might, well, kind of totally undermine panic over the rest. If Tesla is wrong that's very important, and it's not hard to see how they might be cherry picking these stats. Tesla's vehicle fleet of course is going to be much, much newer than vehicles on the road in general. They're also higher end (and this one in particular is a large luxury model), and in principle that could also shift the stats. It would have been useful if the author had dug into that to see how they really measured up, maybe comparing fires by age, vehicle class etc.

But the author didn't do that, and it matters since if Tesla is right it's a very different framing. It's true that ICE vehicles absolutely go up in flames too. Mine did, about 12 years ago in an incident that I expect to remember quite vividly forever. I was driving along the road, car had been recently serviced, regular Fall day, all gauges regular, about as normal an everyday as exists. Suddenly a bit of emissions from under the hood, looked like steam at first, or maybe just a bit of white smoke. Immediately pulled over, fortunately not on the interstate, got out to take a look figuring it was a coolant thing or something. In the 30 seconds my back was turned smoke started to go gray, and somebody else had already called the fire department before I did. By sheer utter luck I was a half mile away from the local town fire department and they were there in maybe 3 minutes. Didn't matter, because DAMN did that thing go up fast. It was in flames ("like a flamethrower" [0]) by the time they arrived, vehicle was totaled. I'm not sure fires are ever going to completely go away in any compact high energy mass manufactured mobile storage system no matter what. So the probabilities matter, and amelioration systems.

Which leads to the much more serious sounding design flaw, the door handle bit.

>"after the car’s electronic door handles failed to extend following a fiery crash"

This sounds like a major issue. I can see retracting door handles being a useful feature in further improving efficiency when driving, but the safety implications are obvious and they should be passive failsafe. Something like pressing against a fairly strong spring(s) with the retraction held constantly by an active electromagnet. So if power fails, they always pop open. Or some sort of clear emergency door blow, or any one of a bunch of other measures I'm undoubtedly failing to consider. Or all of them!

The door handle thing is the kind of "boring" detail issue that really matters a lot. That cars sometimes burn, particularly in crashes, frankly is not by itself so long as they don't represent a systemic issue. It's unfortunate to have so much drama mixed into news over things that are flashy, high visibility, and unusual vs regular stuff that affects people all the time. First responders don't need to get into a car in a hurry just when it's on fire, they need to get in quickly all the time. In my first responder training, we were even cautioned on burning cars (as well as buildings and other such situations), because they really don't want first responders themselves getting badly injured trying to help injured people in situations they're not equipped for. But someone could need a neck brace or other help right away after a crash, and die or suffer unnecessary permanent disability if help couldn't get in right away, even if there wasn't the slightest risk of fire.

Vehicle emergency access is an area constantly worth reevaluating. But this article didn't help me understand how much of a high efficiency vehcile industry wide vs manufacturer specific issue this is.

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0: Editor's note: no, car fires look nothing like flamethrowers holy shit.