Tesla released this week its Q2 2019 vehicle safety report, which for the first time included stats for vehicle fires.
“Tesla vehicle fires are exceptionally rare events, and in some cases, there have been zero Tesla vehicle fires in a quarter,” the report said. However, an increase from one fire per quarter to two per quarter represents an increase of 100%, so in order to avoid misinterpretation of the numbers and provide a meaningful comparison to industry data, Tesla says it will publish an update to vehicle fire data annually.
From 2012 – 2018, there has been approximately one Tesla vehicle fire for every 170 million miles traveled, Tesla reported. By comparison, data from the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) and U.S. Department of Transportation shows that in the U.S. there is a vehicle fire for every 19 million miles traveled.
In order to provide an apt comparison to NFPA data, Tesla’s data set includes instances of vehicle fires caused by structure fires, arson, and other things unrelated to the vehicle, which account for about 15% of Tesla vehicle fires over this time period.
The safety report also showed that Teslas operating on Autopilot are less likely to get into accidents compared to vehicles not using a self-driving system.
In Q2, Tesla registered one accident for every 3.27 million miles driven in which drivers had Autopilot engaged. For those driving without Autopilot but with active safety features, Tesla registered one accident for every 2.19 million miles driven. For those driving without Autopilot and without active safety features, it registered one accident for every 1.41 million miles driven. For comparison, NHTSA’s data currently stands at one accident for every 498,000 miles driven.