> Please think about physics and use specifics in your reasoning.

What do you imagine I was thinking about? Underwater basket-weaving? Please look at my profile on HN. I think I get it, and not just from a college course on physics theory.

Specifics? You are asking for hypothetical scenarios. Severe crash damage is random. It cannot be predicted. Not to a deterministic degree at least. We recently had a horrific crash in our neighborhood. An 18 year old decided it would be OK to drive his car at 100 miles per hour down an avenue.

He lost control at a turn and plowed into a bunch of cars on the side of the road. We heard the impact from over two blocks away and went to investigate. He destroyed FIVE cars. His car and an SUV were mangled into a ball of twisted metal to such an extent that it was hard to tell the two cars apart. He was severely injured. Nearly died. It took them OVER TWO HOURS to get him out. They had to cut the two cars apart from each other and used a crane to separate them. They they had to cut his car to pieces just to get him out. When his car crashed into the SUV the resulting ball of metal demolished another four cars. They were all mangled to an unbelievable degree, a couple of them on top of each other.

There was lots of gasoline everywhere. His tank and the SUV's ruptured. No fire. The firemen sprayed a foam and water over areas and just kept everyone away. There were probably a dozen rescue workers and two ambulances working on this ball of metal to get this kid out.

Now. Stop for a moment. Don't be defensive about Tesla. Think about that wreck. Try to picture what I described in your mind. Picture at least two cars mangled into a ball to such an extent that you have trouble telling them apart. Picture one or more people in there who are in desperate need for help. Now replace the gas-powered cars with electrics with fully charged 85 kW battery packs. Think about powerful super-hot fires. Think about a variety of conduction paths. Think about more than the battery packs but also about the high voltage cables going from the battery packs under the car to the motor controller and motor. Think about any number of potential random arrangements and damage scenarios for these components. Think about a hefty high voltage and high current cable from the battery pack to the motor controller becoming severed and making contact with the body metal. I ask you to think in terms of a severely damaged system, not a battery pack full of water. Now think about the people in there and the rescue workers trying to get to them.

Surely somewhere in there there has to be something that might cause you to take pause and realize there are issues with electrics that we have not yet experienced because electrics are truly rare in a population of over 250 million gasoline vehicles.

This idea that gasoline powered cars are more dangerous is a huge fallacy that is being used to try and protect the reputation of electrics. I get it. I get what they are trying to --and have to- do. That's far from the truth though. If you really want to compare electrics to gasoline vehicles look at the entire history of gas powered vehicles from the 1800's until today. You have over 200 years of history on various designs. The number of gasoline powered cars in the world today easily exceeds a BILLION units. Sorry partner, I have to say that gasoline, as much as you and I hate it --and I do-- is pretty damn safe stuff. The data on Tesla's causing fires due to collisions isn't statistically significant yet. If you were to do the math with this imperfect data today you'd find that Tesla's are six times more likely to catch fire in a collision when compared to gasoline cars. Again, this is based on insufficient data, so it's nonsense. Don't waste any time on it at this point.

I am rooting for Tesla. I truly am. My comments about electric car safety are more about the general issues with electrics rather than Tesla specifically. For all I know Tesla's designs are the safest around. Without detailed engineering data this is pretty difficult to evaluate. I'll take their word. I think it is a cool company.

My concern is that the entire electric "dream" could easily be damaged if we have one or two horrific electrocution or high energy fire incidents. I've purposely blown up LiPo batteries in order to learn more about their failure modes (we use them for our RC planes and helicopters). They produce explosive high energy fires. I don't even want to imagine what a large pack could do.

This, to me, is THE area that requires the most intense work in electrics. Forget range. Forget increased capacity. Safety is the number one consideration. Imagine, if you will, if we had the technology to make electric cars with packs that could take you a thousand miles. Maybe that's a couple of hundred thousand kW. How do you deal with these things in serious accidents? You can't discharge them quickly enough. The fires could be unimaginably hot and violent with electrical systems capable of delivering hundreds of volts and probably thousands of amps in an instant. This is dangerous stuff. Combine such a vehicle colliding with a gasoline powered vehicle and, well, now things are even scarier.

All that is needed for the electric car industry to suffer a serious setback is for an event to occur that would plant fear in the minds of buyers. I don't care how much of a proponent of electrics anyone might be. If a mother is in fear of her kids being electrocuted or burned to death in a horrible way you lost that buyer forever. No amount of reason or statistics is going to fix that problem. That's the scenario I am concerned about. Tesla and the entire electrics industry could be destroyed overnight if something horrible happened. Panic is a powerful force. That's the plain truth.

No disrespect. I am not trying to diminish you. I am simply not sure you've thought this through. If you are coming to this conversation from a perspective of having taken a usual dose of physics courses in high-school and college and without a reasonably amount of experience with high-power/high-voltage systems I will respectfully suggest you might not be equipped to fully grasp the gravity of the situation. Again, this is not a personal attack. I am just stating facts. I am not a doctor and would not be equipped to fully grasp a range of medical issues. That's just a fact.

Yes, understanding the theory is important. However, as the saying goes, in theory, theory and practice are the same, in practice, they are not. I've dealt with a wide range of high voltage and high power systems throughout my engineering career. High voltage is dangerous. Very dangerous. Period. I could not imagine any reasonably experienced electrical engineer not agreeing with me on this one. You don't want to be anywhere near an uncontrolled system with several hundred volts and lots of available energy, much less be in it, wet and injured. Not fear-mongering. This is as real as it gets.