Crank up the Press - Another Tesla Fire

Those are full population statistics; essentially new Tesla S and average 11.4 years old for all US registered vehicles. The fire S are probably the newest of the bunch, certainly older than the roadster. Not the selection bias you're looking for.

 

Again, those other cars catch fire MORE often. Give me the stats of new cars then? Hot engines on grass, hot mufflers, gas tanks? Its not suprising there are so many car fires. You showed no math! As I said statistics of small numbers say you can't say much without a large uncertainty. Until you get the teslas burning 2 a month, they are within that range.

Beleive its only old cars? Why did the latest recalls take all these new cars? Remember Toyota, Ford, and Porsche failed their NHTSA investigations. Tesla asked for one, and passed. Believe what you want, but I gave you only good statistics

 

I'm not looking for selection bias, I am looking for data which you appear to not have?
How about the new Porsche cars I linked to?
Yes, the average vehicle is 11.4 years old. Other than your assumption, do you have any data showing car fires per year by age?

 

No need. Your new Tesla S pop versus questionably maintained, 11.4 year old average of all pop. Screw the Porsche.

 

11.4 years is the average age of the registered fleet, and will include 20 to 30 year old collectible cars, beater pick ups kept around for hauling big items, fun cars for the weekend, etc. It also includes the 15 million new cars sold last year.

If vehicle age is a major contributing factor to the likely hood of a fire in a gasoline car, prove it.

 

Well, trollbait, let me answer for you and your trollbuddy.

Consider the lack of maintenance on those beaters and the far greater number of vehicle miles on the non-collector "fleet", and consider that even with the 15 million "new" (which includes the toasty Teslas, BTW), the average age of the registered pop is 11.4 years. Now think again about impact on likelihood of fire incodents due to hoses, rust, out of tolerance, accidents due to any of the above, etc. Or don't. Those are my comments. All that should be necessary, except for Musk-o-philes and like Tesla kool aid drinkers.

 

Just so we're all on the same page.

Published: Thursday, 13 Feb 2014 | 11:24 PM ET
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is currently investigating the safety of the Model S battery system. There is no indication when that investigation may be completed. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said he believes the NHTSA probe will end without a recall of the Model S.

The fire, during which nobody was hurt, happened Feb. 1 in Toronto, Canada, Toronto Fire Services confirmed. TFS said the origin of the fire was in the engine area, but the actual source of the fire is unclear.
Tesla confirmed the fire while downplaying the incident. Spokeswoman Liz Jarvis-Shean said in a statement, "We don't yet know the precise cause, but have definitively determined that it did not originate in the battery, the charging system, the adapter or the electrical receptacle, as these components were untouched by the fire."

 

+1

No, thank you. It appears that the investigation is not over. I swear I read that, but some source must have read cleared from the german safety agency and written NHTSA.

 

Fire safety is a big deal. Finding evidence to support your claim shouldn't take too long.

In 2007 the median passenger vehicle age was 9.4 years. In 2011 it had risen to 10.8 years.
From 2004 to 2006, there were 258,500 highway vehicle fires year. For the period of 2008 to 2010, that number dropped to 194,000 per year. A rate of 0.076% and 0.102% respectively. Despite the registered fleet getting older, the rate of fires has dropped.

Cash for clunkers took place in 2009. Perhaps it had some influence. We would need to look at specific data for each year. Eyeballing the data we have, I think it might at most have the fire rates for each time period equal out. For the older car more prone to fire hypothesis to work out, the 2008 to 2010 rate has to be higher.

Vehicle age is only part of the picture. Miles driven is the other when it comes fires from accidents. More miles driven, more likely an accident. The odds are there that the newer, better maintained cars are being driven the most. Thus most likely to be in an accident and possibly burn.

Passenger vehicles in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/statistics/v9i1.pdf
http://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/statistics/v13i11.pdf

 

I found some more data for you Air Boss,
http://tkolb.net/FireReports/US_VehFirTrePat2003-2007.pdf

It is scant, but there is some information on fire causes by model year.
This was for 2007. A bit old, but the best I have found so far.

In 2007:

Total automobile fires 189,000
11% of vehicle fires that were intentionally set happened in model year 2006 or newer cars.
12% of vehicle fires due to collision or overturn happened in 2006 or newer cars.

These next two are from me eyeballing the graph, so percentages could be off by a little.
2.75% of vehicle fires due to electrical failure happened in 2006 or newer cars.
2.5% of vehicle fires due to mechanical failure happened in 2006 or newer cars.

This equates to about:
Collision or overturn - 20,790
Intentional - 22,680
Mechanical failure - 4,725
Electrical failure - 5198

Cars sold in 2006&2007 = 32,700,000

Sooooooo
Odds of a two year old or newer car vehicle fire due to

Collision or overturn - 7 in 10,000
Intentional - 6 in 10,000
Electrical failure. - 1.6 in 10,000
Mechanical failure. - 1.5 in 10,000

As noted in the paper, these are not mutually exclusive, so the total number of new car fires is not simply 16.1 out of every 10,000 new cars.
To be conservative, let's say there is about a 40% overlap, so the total is about 10 out of every 10,000 new cars. Or 1 out of every 1,000.

There have been about 22,000 Model S vehicles sold in the last two years.
If following the same trends from the 2003-2007 time frame, that should be 11-13 fires.
We have had 2 in the US that happened on roads (garage fires were not included in the above 2007 statistics, nor were accidents outside of the US).

So, that works out to about 1/5 as likely as a new model gas car.
Could be luck, could be that the cars are safer. We know the overturn chances are greatly reduced.

Regardless the reasons, the data so far does seem to support the idea that the Model S has a lower fire risk than most cars.

 

I wouldn't say that. We have such a very small sample set of cars. What we can say is telsa S doesn't appear to be riskier than average cars, that is the null hypothesis. We need the results of the NHTSA on going investigation and more data before we can say the Tesla S is less likely to catch fire. Certainly it is less likely to create a fire from leaking gasoline in a collision, or engine fire, or fire from a hot muffler, but not enough data from an electrical fire or battery fire.

Trollbaits statistics indicate newer cars are probably less likely to cause fires than older cars. This doesn't indicate a lack of maintenance though it could, but may simply be now car makers are making cars safer than they were in 2000. I certainly would expect that a 2015 toyota would not have the same risk of electrical fires as the ones toyota has recently recalled, as the parts would be better tested than the ones that caused the door and heated seat fires.

 

Very good point. I should have said, statistically a smaller ratio of Tesla's have had fires than 2006 and 2007 model year cars had in 2007.

I completely agree that the sample size is still too small, so we can only talk about what has happened, and what happens in a similar timeframe to other cars.

We are now over 200 Million miles for the Model S fleet. I am guessing at least 170 million of that is US miles. As that continues to grow we should get better and better data.

 

Average Age of Cars in U.S. Jumps to Record High of 11.4 Years

Published: 08/07/2013

Average Age of Cars in U.S. Jumps to Record High of 11.4 Years | Edmunds.com

Much of it poorly maintained... Draw your own conclusions.

 

In the two reports I linked, it is an interesting note that in the majority of fires it was 'general materials' that ignited first. The category covers tires, wire insulation, fabrics, trash in the vehicle, etc. Perhaps the wire insulation and fabrics became more suspectible to igniting as they age, or the materials are improved in newer cars. Likely it's a combination of the two.

It sticks out because the accepted wisdom would have the second most common group to ignite, fluids including fuel, would be first.

 

Oh, and there's this:

11-07-2013, 10:28 AM​

#244​

BillHamp ​

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Nov 2013

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I've been doing the math and Tesla has a problem on its hands. If you consider average age of the car, then Tesla is far more likely to catch fire than any ICE vehicle. Let me explain.​

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The average ICE vehicle is 11.4 years old (we'll just use 11). During those 11 years, the rate of fire is ~138,600/230,000,000 (controlling for intentional fire, etc.). That means risk of fire over the life of an ICE car is 0.0006. To get the risk per year, we have to divide by 11. We get 0.00005.​

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Now, do the same calculation for Tesla. The average care is 1 year old (actually younger, but this will favor Tesla to use 1 year). There have been 3 fires and there are about 12,500 Model S sedans out there. That means we have 3/12,500 = 0.00024. We divide by 1 to get the same answer back.​

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That means risk of fire is 0.0024/vehicle yr for Tesla and 0.00005/vehicle hr for an ICE. That means risk of fire is 4.8 fold higher for the Tesla. It gets worse though.​

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According to the NHTSA, risk of fire in an accident is about 2.9/1,000 accidents in an ICE. The rate of accident overall is about 2% of all vehicles on the road. If we do that calculation for Tesla, then there would have been 12,500 * 0.02 = 344 accidents so far. If we have 3 fires, then rate of fire per accident is 3/344 = 0.0087, which is 8.7/1,000. That is a three fold higher risk of fire per accident. For Tesla to be at the same rate of fires/accident, there would need to be ~1,000 accidents or roughly 8% of all Model S would need to be wrecked.​

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None of this bodes well for what was, until now, the "safest car in the world." Telsa needs to figure out what is going on and fix it IMMEDIATELY because this will not just kill the company, it will set EVs back decades.​

 

Not really. As electrical connections age, their resistance increases, and thus these connections tend to overheat when carrying a specific current, as required by, say, a starter motor as it is cranked or a high wattage set of lamps.

 

No one is denying that the fleet age is going up. A higher average age isn't explanation for gasoline and diesel cars apparent higher rate of fire in comparison to BEVs. There were more car fires when the fleet age was lower. If age alone is the major factor as you propose, why haven't more cars gone up in flames with this aging fleet?

Of course, 11.4 years is the average. Which means half the cars on the road are younger than that. Assuming an even spread in age range, and 20, 30, 50, or 100 year old (still some Model Ts running around) garage queens aren't skewing that 11.4 years.

Until we see the data stating otherwise, we can only assume that the cars catching fire are evenly spread along the age range. Just as many 1 year old ones caught fire as the 12 year old ones.

 

Assumptions are wrong, methodology is wrong, math is wrong.
Check out the section I bolded, he calculates the rate of a Model S catching fire as 0.00024 at the end of one paragraph, then in the beginning of the next he places the rate at 0.0024.
Even though his numbers and math are in error, he doesn't even stay consistent within his own argument.
Which, if he did, would again show the rate of fires in Tesla's as being LESS than that of other cars.

I believe I did a better job with the assumptions, methodology and math in my previous response. Why don't you check out the conclusions there? Let me know if you find any errors or have suggestions to how to more accurately calculate the rates of fires.

 

Links please? From the numbers I have seen, that first division should be the fire risk per year, not the total risk for 11 years. That means the subsequent division by 11 is garbage.

While fleet mechanical and electrical fires start low and increase with age, crash and arson fires are high from the start, and have much higher fatality rates. Crash rates seem more related to annual miles driven, which generally starts high and declines with age.

I found that yesterday, but was going to make him find some data for himself.