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That's just being bad at statistics. How old are the cars that catch on fire on average, and why do they catch fire? You can't just compare all cars to some sub

That's just being bad at statistics. How old are the cars that catch on fire on average, and why do they catch fire? You can't just compare all cars to some subset of cars and derive a basic conclusion from there. For example; the average car on the US roads is 12.2 years. Tesla only started mass production 10 years ago.

mdorazio 4y ago
If you have data that granular, please share. If not, a top-level analysis seems better than none at all.
- fbrncci 4y ago
  It's worse than none, it's basically useless. Take into account safety ratings of all Tesla's on the road (one of the highest) vs safety rating of all cars on the road (average at best), and then think again whether 0.6 vs 0.4 says anything at all. The actual difference could be many factors higher.
InvertedRhodium 4y ago
By that logic, I think you'd first need to show that the age of the car impacts the likelihood it catches fire. Product failures tend to follow a bell curve over the period of their lifetime.
- kaba0 4y ago
  To compare in good faith you still have to cut at the same side of this bell curve though.
KennyBlanken 4y ago
Tesla's imaginary PR department engages in this sort of nonsense themselves. They compare their fleet's crash rate, for example, to all cars on the road in the US, at a time when the age of the average car on the road is the oldest it has ever been. The average car on the road also isn't a well-optioned mid-luxury car with driver assistance aides. It would be like BMW saying "our new BMW M-whatever is faster than 90% of cars on the road!" Uh, yes, but how fast is it compared to other new, similarly priced sports sedans? When you compare Teslas against cars made in a similar time period, in a similar market space (mid luxury) which are much more likely to have driver assistance aides like emergency braking, lane departure warning / intervention, cross traffic warning, etc - Teslas have a much worse crash rate.

mdorazio 4y ago

If you have data that granular, please share. If not, a top-level analysis seems better than none at all.

fbrncci 4y ago
It's worse than none, it's basically useless. Take into account safety ratings of all Tesla's on the road (one of the highest) vs safety rating of all cars on the road (average at best), and then think again whether 0.6 vs 0.4 says anything at all. The actual difference could be many factors higher.

InvertedRhodium 4y ago

By that logic, I think you'd first need to show that the age of the car impacts the likelihood it catches fire. Product failures tend to follow a bell curve over the period of their lifetime.

kaba0 4y ago
To compare in good faith you still have to cut at the same side of this bell curve though.

KennyBlanken 4y ago

Tesla's imaginary PR department engages in this sort of nonsense themselves. They compare their fleet's crash rate, for example, to all cars on the road in the US, at a time when the age of the average car on the road is the oldest it has ever been. The average car on the road also isn't a well-optioned mid-luxury car with driver assistance aides. It would be like BMW saying "our new BMW M-whatever is faster than 90% of cars on the road!" Uh, yes, but how fast is it compared to other new, similarly priced sports sedans? When you compare Teslas against cars made in a similar time period, in a similar market space (mid luxury) which are much more likely to have driver assistance aides like emergency braking, lane departure warning / intervention, cross traffic warning, etc - Teslas have a much worse crash rate.