On August 23, the data provided by electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla showed that the probability of a fire on a petrol vehicle is much higher than that of Tesla. Car fires are nothing new. But the fire of a Tesla electric car can often be news. In 2013, three fire incidents involving Tesla electric vehicles became the focus of media coverage in the United States.
However, in the 2020 Impact Report, data provided by Tesla shows that the probability of a fire on a petrol vehicle is much higher than that of Tesla. In 2019, there were nearly 190,000 car fires in the United States, but only a small percentage of them involved electric vehicles.
From 2012 to 2020, there will be a Tesla fire incident for every 320 million kilometers driven, Tesla said. In contrast, data from the National Fire Protection Association and the U.S. Department of Transportation show that there is a fire in a car for every 30 million kilometers in the United States. According to the above statistics, the probability of a Tesla car catching fire is less than that of an ordinary gasoline car. One-tenth.
Tesla said, In order to compare with the NFPA data, Tesla’s statistics include car fires caused by building fires, arson, and other causes unrelated to the vehicle itself. This is also Tesla’s statistical time period. Part of the cause of fires in electric vehicles.
Fires in electric vehicle batteries are rare, but they do happen. Chevrolet recently recalled 51,000 Bolt electric vehicles, the reason seems to be a problem with the battery module. The laws of physics state that any medium that can store energy to drive a car, including gasoline and batteries, can cause a fire.
Tesla and other automakers design battery packs to minimize the risk of fire. Tesla co-founder Marc Tarpenning once said that the Tesla team’s efforts in battery safety when designing the Roadster electric sports car were nearly paranoid. Each cell in the Tesla battery pack is isolated from adjacent cells so that overheating of a single cell does not cause a chain reaction.
The battery pack is also equipped with sensors to monitor the acceleration, deceleration and tilt of the electric vehicle, and to detect whether the battery has a collision, whether it produces smoke or overheating. When there are a large number of old electric vehicles on the road in the future, will the risk of fire increase? After Tesla’s data was released, some people speculated that most of the fuel vehicles that caught fire might be mainly older, poorly maintained vehicles.
Tesla said: We will continue to improve the battery chemistry, battery structure, battery pack structure and the passive safety of vehicles to minimize the risk of fire as much as possible. Finally, for a very small number of Tesla cars that caught fire We will provide detailed information to firefighters and first responders so that they can safely handle these emergencies.
