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Comment by BitwiseFool | Hacker News Reader

The media sure loves to cover stories about Teslas catching fire, don't they?

Yes, but if Tesla wants to go around claiming their cars are so much safer than ICE cars, they'll just have to deal with all the media coverage of the many, many, many, many times that Teslas are less safe than other cars on the road.

Live by the sword, die by the sword, and all that.

You'll note that the Kia Niro EV gets minimal coverage (other than perfunctory reporting of recalls) because....wait for it...they don't claim it's safer or better than other cars, just electrified.

The real question is, are they objectively safer than ICEs by a numbers standpoint? There's a reporting bias because intputmag and other media outlets do not write stories about when other cars catch fire. Such coverage is skewing people's perceptions.

There have been about 135K Kia Niros sold in the 6 years they've been being produced.

Meanwhile, Tesla is delivering 300K vehicles per quarter.

Kia Niro EV gets minimal coverage because they're selling a minimal number of them.

You are comparing Tesla's worldwide sales across all models versus Kia's single-model sales in one country.

For a proper comparison, Kia sells 200k vehicles/month (for 600k/quarter). And is considered one of the smaller major automakers.

Kias don't get covered in the news because cheap, reliable cars that don't have issues aren't newsworthy. They're the standard. Teslas are in the news all the time because they're expensive pieces of crap that have constant issues from the moment they roll of the assembly line.

Yes, by now they should have been used to it. It's not like it's a rare occurence...

Statistically, it is indeed a rare occurrence. What they should be used to is gas cars self-immolating.

The fire wasn't the main safety issue of the story.

Teslas sure love catching fire, don't they?

Compared to other ICE cars? When a ford fiesta catches fire no one writes an article about it.

Electro-chemical fires (lithium batteries) are a whole different beast compared to common fires with ICE vehicles.

The lithium battery fires basically cannot be extinguished, and it's a tremendous amount of energy.

Yes, but the GP comment:

> Teslas sure love catching fire, don't they?

implies a higher quantity of fires, which is just FUD.

I'm not sure about the numbers, but I've seen multiple Tesla fires IRL, and never seen an ICE vehicle spontaneously begin smoking and catch fire in front of me. Ymmv.

Ford just told 39k owners of Expeditions and Navigators to park outside because of engine fires. 12 of the 16 reported fires happened while the cars were turned off. https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/ford/2022/05/19/ford-...

I’ve seen multiple gas car fires IRL, and never seen a Tesla vehicle spontaneously begin smoking and catch fire.

I guess our anecdata cancels out.

They're probably outright lying anyways.

Not really.

But the media likes to latch on to that idea. Like a plane crash, a Tesla fire is exceptionally rare, but the news media will report every single one.

If someone's ICE overheats and catches fire, it will hit the local news, maybe. Even if it does, it'll be a 15 second "Oh, traffic on I-5 was slower than normal this afternoon because of a car fire." But a Tesla fire? That's national news.

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