This story is unfortunate spin for two reasons. The minor reason is Wired appears to be completely speculating when they state, "Could Spark Federal Inquiry".

This story is unfortunate spin for two reasons. The minor reason is Wired appears to be completely speculating when they state, "Could Spark Federal Inquiry". The second and really much larger reason this article is spin is that they are painting this as a major issue without giving enough information to quantify it. I try to quantify it in this comment and the results are the opposite of how Wired is spinning this issue. Here's what they said: While there are an average of 150,000 car fires in the U.S. each year, with only 19,000 Model S sedans on the road, having three vehicles catch fire in six weeks has garnered plenty of attention. So this is comparing two data sets: A: % of Tesla Vehicles that catch fire. Dividing 3 by 19,000 leads to a fire incidence rate of 0.0158%. B: % of all vehicles that catch fire. For this data set, Wired helpfully tells you the numerator of 150,000 vehicles catch fire in the U.S. but completely leaves out the denominator. Without giving the complete information for data set B, it's difficult to determine if Tesla's fire incidence rate is out of the ordinary and warrants the speculation of, "Could Spark Federal Inquiry". So in an attempt to find the denominator, I discovered: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_vehicles_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_vehicles_in_the_Unite... Overall, there were an estimated 254.4 million registered passenger vehicles in the United States according to a 2007 DOT study Seems reasonable to use this as the denominator. If anything, since not every registered car is regularly driven, it is likely a high estimate and therefore understates the percentage. But calculating it, 150,000 divided by 254,400,000 equals a fire incidence rate of 0.059% for data set B. So the average passenger vehicle catches fire 3.73 times as often as a Tesla Model S. Now, caveats: This is comparing an annual number (0.059%) for some other time period. Without thinking much about it, you might believe there is weight to Wired's assertion that this is "3 vehicle fires in 6 weeks". The Model S has been driving on the road for much longer than 6 weeks. In fact, retail deliveries started about a year and a half ago. While technically accurate, to frame the data as "3 fires in 6 weeks" is misleading due to cherry picking data.