I was thinking about this this morning and also wondered about the time difference between when he said the tire pressure warning happened somewhere along Hwy 17 and when he got picked up and had the car brought to the Los Gatos tire shop (for those out of the area Hwy 17 runs through the town of Los Gatos and Hwy 17 is heavily traveled and traffic can move very slowly depending on direction and time of day; and for locals, the tire shop is down from Campo di Bocce and a bit futher down from the Los Gatos Superchargers).
As you mentioned with the wait for the tow, it could take some time before reaching the shop. Just going from the junction of Hwys 9 and 17 in morning traffic to the shop 2 miles away, google says can take about 45 minutes and we don't know where he was on 17 when he pulled over. The battery fire in the Hwy 101 accident in Mt. View happened fairly soon after the collision as I recall reading and after his rescuers had quickly freed him from the car. All this leads me to question how quickly thermal runaway happens from a breach of the battery pack. I am sure we will be hearing about issues like this down the road from other BEV manufacturers as well when their cars are involved in fires. No doubt research into preventing or better managing thermal runaway is ongoing.
From something I either read or heard on the news last night, the owner has owned a few Teslas before this one so wasn't new to EVs. I'm glad no one was hurt. While I can understand his reaction to buying another car, unlike him I don't feel dissuaded at all to own a Tesla. Having seen crashed Teslas in the press, and a number of those in very bad crashes, and only a handful have had fire issues I don't see this as a reason to stay away from a car that has done a great job protecting it's drivers and occupants.
I'm sure at some point after the car data is collected, the body inspected and timeline figured out, we'll be told what triggered this.