I think it's lamentable that we're all looking at the bulk, "brute-force" statistical reasoning instead of considering the details of the case and what that mea

I think it's lamentable that we're all looking at the bulk, "brute-force" statistical reasoning instead of considering the details of the case and what that means for the fire safety of the car. The line you quoted was incidental, rather than necessary, to the substance of Musk's argument. Whether it's PR or not is ignoratio elenchi. If the battery really was punctured by an unfortunately placed piece of metal in a sort of surprising scenario, we ought to stratify by collision type in order to really understand the problem. How do gas cars perform during a gas tank puncture? At similar speeds? And how common are such collisions? The relevance of this consideration is expressed by Simpson's paradox: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson's_paradox http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson's_paradox I.e. analyses of performance when conditions differ ought to take into account those conditions, at least when they are both a: known (true in this case) and b: not causally connected to the variable under consideration (also true in this case).