Running over a tow hitch seems to be a pretty low standard for significantly damaged.
It just feels like somebody's looking for an excuse to go after Tesla. I read these articles about people leaping over concrete barriers and wrapping their car around a tree and just wonder "what the hell did you expect would happen?"
Yes, quite improbable. It might break the engine, but there is nothing in the front of a car that would catch fire from such an impact.
So 194,000 vehicle fires per year, or 18,602 within any given five week period.
Toyota's market share is 14.2%, so if the fires are evenly distributed, there would've been 2,641 vehicles of that brand catching fire. That's pretty close to 3,000.
Tesla isn't the victim of a smear campaign, this is fairly minor news that gets amplified in the HN/tech bubble.
The key is that in both cases, the entire mass and momentum of the vehicle were contributing to the intrusion of a piece of steel into an aluminum vessel. No engineering in the world is going to stop that steel from penetrating in that case. A different material and/or different placement will be needed to improve the situation.