...there is about a 1 in 1333 chance of the average vehicle catching on fire. Well. There's that chance of the average vehicle burning. There's a breakdown in

...there is about a 1 in 1333 chance of the average vehicle catching on fire. Well. There's that chance of the average vehicle burning. There's a breakdown in the PDF "Highway Vehicle Fires (2008-2010)" that points out a lot of the fires in traditional vehicles (about 40%) are started by arson and accidental, non-malfunction sources of ignition. And that there's reason to believe arson is under-reported: NFIRS no longer collects information on suspicious fires that may have been intentionally set. As a result, intentional fires may be undercounted. Moreover, due to the volume of fires, many automobile fires are not investigated for possible arson. Only about a quarter of vehicle fires are considered to be definitely malfunction-related. I want to see Tesla succeed. But I don't think its hype or alarmist to say that they seem to be malfunctioning in this way a lot, catching fire in everyday situations (like driving down the road) that don't seem to ignite many conventional cars. That's probably perfectly natural; new tech always has growing pains.