Tesla fires are 11x lower and less frequent than ICE vehicles

Tesla has recently revealed its latest Vehicle Fire Data for the period 2012-2021, where it claims that the Tesla electric cars witnessed 11 times lower fire incidents compared to conventional internal combustion engine-powered vehicles. The electric car manufacturer claims that during the 2012-2021 period, there was roughly one Tesla EV fire for every 210 million miles driven. This marks an improvement for Tesla, as it reported one EV fire in every 205 million miles in the 2012-2020 period.

In the new 2021 Impact Report, Tesla revealed that between 2012 and 2021, there were approximately five Tesla vehicle fires for every billion miles travelled, while the national average for all vehicles in the US is 53.

The automaker's data also indicates that not all the fires were caused by Tesla cars, as the manufacturer's data set includes instances of vehicle fires caused by structure fires, arson, and other things that are not related to the vehicle to make an apt comparison to the US National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) data. NFPA data shows the national average for vehicle fires in the US remains at the same level of one fire per 19 million miles travelled.

Tesla's data also reveals that the difference between Tesla and the average is 11:1. This makes a positive case for Tesla and in general for electric cars as well, by indicating they are safer than the traditional internal combustion engine-powered models.

Despite being the largest electric car seller in the world, Tesla has received flak several times for different issues. One of them is the fire incidents involving Tesla electric cars. This somehow dented the general sentiment about electric cars. However, the latest set of data shows that electric cars are much safer than their ICE counterparts.