> This means you are 5 times more likely to experience a fire in a conventional gasoline car than a Tesla!

I LOVE THE COMPANY. I DON'T ENJOY OR APPRECIATE THE LAME MARKETING ATTEMPTS THEY SOMETIMES MAKE. Just like that whole business of jumping through hoops to make it seem like there was some new magical way to finance a Tesla, this is wrong.

Trying to create a safety metric by comparing the number of fires to the number of miles driven per vehicle type is pure nonsense. You have to look at the causes and mechanisms of the fires and dig a lot deeper than that in order to even hope to generate a meaningful metric.

Here's an imperfect analogy (numbers made-up): One million people run marathons every year world wide. 1000 have heart attacks and die. Ten thousand people have run marathons with our shoes and only one had a heart attack and didn't die. You are far less likely to have a heart attack and die if you run marathons with our shoes.

Nonsense. Right?

RIGHT.

Almost anyone would look at that and recognize it as a poor attempt to create a nexus where one does not exist. I think it's bad marketing.

Now, if we started to dive into the statistics and identified location, weather conditions, age, physical conditioning, pre-existing conditions (heart problem they did not know about), etc. we might actually be able to attempt a comparison between people wearing the new shoes vs. the other brands. Even then, the nexus would be tenuous at best.

A similar exercise would be needed to compare car fires between brands and types with any degree of validity. I don't have the time to dive into the stats. It was easy enough to Google [0][1][2][3] and do a quick scan:

It is easy to see that young males are more likely to be involved in a car fire.

There are statistics about different brands having different fatality rates (not necessarily related).

Lots of fires are caused by running equipment. Lots of fires originate in the engine compartment. Mechanical and electrical failures seem to account for over 60% of fires.

The point is simple: Far more extensive and detailed statistical work needs to be undertaken before anyone can conclude absolutely anything on the merits of any particular car or design as it pertains to potential to cause fires.

Elon and his team are very smart. They know this. And this is why some of their marketing of late feels really dirty and beneath them. This is Tesla reacting to news that affected their stock price and, potentially, buyer sentiment, with marketing rather than the truth.

Are Tesla's safer than all gasoline cars? That question is probably not an easy one to answer at all.

There's the potential for a theoretical sort of an answer based on design. For example, there are no fuel lines to rupture. Does that mean it is safer? Hard to say. What do you compare that to? Perhaps you can list all the potential sources of ignition and sort them by probability and MTBF? Not sure.

Of course, then you have the real-life probability. Once you get a million cars on the road with all kinds of people, driving in all conditions, roads and levels of maintenance and neglect things can change dramatically. If I remember correctly Tesla has somewhere in the order of twenty thousand. There's a reason we see major car companies recall hundreds of thousands of cars every so often. Shit happens. Design error are made. And it can take time and a massive installed base to discover them.

THE TRUTH OF THE MATTER is these are the kinds of tests electric cars will have to endure over a period of time in order to reach wide adoption. Despite what's been said here a full tank of gasoline is far safer than a fully charged battery pack with enough energy to go 300 miles.

Before anyone mauls me, consider how many gasoline cars have been driven and, yes, crashed, world-wide since gasoline cars came into mass production. Not last year. Since forever.

There have probably been millions of accidents without fires, even with fuel leaks. There's probably no imaginable way to compare the two at this time. We simply don't have enough data. And, no, linking to a horrible crash video on youtube involving gasoline igniting does absolutley nothing to support arguments on either side.

The one issue with electrics that is not spoken of is the fact that you have a several hundred volt high energy system that could very well electrocute passengers. I fully expect that to happen one day (in general, not necessarily Tesla). If and when that happens you can bet it will set the breaks on electrics for a while and relevant stocks will plummet.

I still believe electric cars are the future. We simply need to go though the evolutionary process that will make them really safe for hundreds of millions of electrics to share the road. What happens when you have a pile-up of ten or twenty electric cars on a fogg-covered highway? A pile of mangled wrecks with 400 Volt high energy systems is unimaginably dangerous. I can think of a few horrific scenarios under those conditions.

At some level part of me thinks that fuel cells are the future, not batteries. Having something relatively benign that can leak out would be a good thing.

A few months ago there was a horrific crash in my neighborhood. This 18 year old kid decided it was OK to go 100 miles per hour on this avenue. He lost control and plowed into a bunch of cars parked by the side of the road. He absolutely destroyed seven of them before coming to a stop. Most of the cars were mangled beyond recognition. He was driving an SUV with a lot of mass. His SUV was nearly cut in half and impaled into one of the cars to a degree that made it difficult to see where one car started and the other ended. Almost like taking two lumps of play-doh and mixing them together.

No fire. Gasoline all over the place but no ignition at all. He hit the first car, fused into it and the "ball" formed by the two cars proceeded to destroy the other six. Absolutely amazing display of how much kinetic energy was dissipated.

Had this been eight fully-charged electric cars I am almost certain there would have been a horrific fire as well as the potential for absolutely impossible to describe electrocution of some of the passengers. And, to make matters worst, it would have taken the rescue crew far longer to remove the victims as they would have to be worries about electrocuting themselves and the victims (at the very least).

Until there are enough electric cars on the road to have a massive pile-up accident [4] where most cars are electric we will not really understand the practical reality of a world where every car on the road is electric. Imagine having to walk out of a one hundred mangled car pile-up where every car has a battery pack storing enough energy to drive 300 to 400 miles and they are wired to produce hundreds of volts. I can't imagine anyone who understands electronics and electricity that would tell me all would be well after looking at the pictures from this accident [4] if all cars were electric. Look at pictures 1, 8 and 11. No fires. Gasoline isn't all that bad in this regard.

[0] http://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/statistics/v13i11.pdf

[1] http://www.usfa.fema.gov/statistics/reports/vehicles.shtm

[2] http://www.chandlerlawgroup.com/library/national-vehicle-fir...

[3] http://www.statisticbrain.com/driver-fatality-stats-by-auto-...

[4] http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/05/world/europe/uk-huge-chain-rea...