Was returning home today on HWY 60. Yep, a car beside the road totally engulfed in flames. Fire department hadn't even arrived yet. Just the one car involved. I hope the occupants are okay. Just one more example of how unsafe these cars are. I expect it will be on national news tomorrow. And I expect a scathing article by Business Insider next week. Oh, the car was a late model Prius (gen 2/3). Time to short $Toyota stock.
If it was a Prius, the news will bang on about how unsafe lithium batteries are. Can guarantee that one I don't know if a lot of people understand the differences in battery tech.
actually, a prius will get a lot more media hype than a gasser, but probably less than a tesla, since they're reporting tesla fires as far away as shanghai
Regardless of which Prius you own, it is still a gasser in one form or another. It appears that any Tesla that burns, anywhere in the world, regardless of the reason, is national news. How many Teslas have I personally seen burning on the side of the road in Californation (the land of Tesla) in the last 10 years? ZERO. How many gassers have I personally seen burning beside the road here in Californation in the last 10 years? Around 10 , most of them pure gassers, at least two of them Toyotas. How many of these fires have I seen reported on the national (even local) news? ZERO. There is a concerted effort to take Tesla down by people and industries with a lot of money to lose if Tesla succeeds (members of the SEC for example). I am confident that is not going to happen. I am convinced that Elon is bi-polar, the Captain Queeg of the auto industry, but he will succeed in spite of his disability. His ship is in stormy waters right now, but it is not going down.
Yup. Since a regular gasser burns about every 2 minutes in the U.S., it simply isn't news. Only something exotic, like an EV or Prius, is 'news'. From a link posted to another thread here long ago: "U.S. VEHICLE FIRE TRENDS AND PATTERNS ... Abstract In 2003-2007, U.S. fire departments responded to an average of 287,000 vehicle fires per year. These fires caused an average of 480 civilian deaths, 1,525 civilian injuries, and $1.3 billion in direct property damage annually. Cars, trucks and other highway vehicles (meaning a vehicle designed for highway use, not that the fire occurred on a highway) accounted for 93% of the vehicle fires and 92% of the vehicle fire deaths." http://tkolb.net/FireReports/US_VehFirTrePat2003-2007.pdf
What about those darn House fires, they never makes the news! Thanks for pointing out how unsafe cars can be!
Battery-powered cars remain a tiny minority in the U.S., with sales of EVs accounting for just 1.2 percent of total new vehicles delivered in the U.S. last year, according to data from Edmunds. So of course we will not see as many EV fires as gas powered cars. But in my 30 plus years of driving hundreds of thousands of miles, I have seen 2 car fire, and that was within the last few years. Of course these were older cars, so fuel lines will age. Lack of maintenance is not a particular cars fault.
