...and think about regular household appliances that catch fire. I actually came home to find my two yogurt makers turned off and the house smelling like burnt plastic. I make homemade Keefer in these yogurt makers, been making it for 6 months when just one day the Keefer grains really went off. They fermented so much that they pushed all the milk/water out of the bottle, over the yogurt maker which eventually worked the wetness inside the yogurt maker. The outside of the yogurt maker was black along the bottom, soot, and when I opened up the yogurt maker I could see that the entire unit (both units, had 2 running at the time) had failed in the same way. Luckily the house breaker did its job and triggered cutting the power. Secondly the flash inside the yogurt maker didn't get hot enough to catch the plastic on fire.
When taking the yogurt maker apart I found it *was not* sealed at the top and bottom, allowing the unit to get moisture inside which is a very bad design. I called the company and emailed them the pics, sent them the units, they mentioned that nobody had reported any issue like this. I told them its just a matter of time, the design is flawed, and must be sealed! They refunded my money for the 2 that fried, but they seemed really relaxed on the situation, and didn't see serious the word *fire* is.
I ordered two more, since I do like them, and modified it to prevent this from happening. I opened, then added RTV silicon to both the top and bottom areas of the yogurt maker. I also shielded as much as possible all of the electrical connections inside to limit any "short" in the case water did penetrate my seal.
To sum up my point, anything that is manufactured, has electronics or plugged into a hot-wire, has potential to fail. The reason they fail is that the engineers either ignored or missed a test case, or even it may have been brought up but pushed off due to getting the product out in time, and failure to identify and resolve these issues before reaching the customers hands risks of product name as well as the manufacturer associated with it.
As a manufacturer / designer / tester you want to catch all of this before it gets released to the public (at the latest in the test lab before the release), and if missed could get lucky with a customer who's willing to work with you to correct the issue and not be loud about it due to brand loyalty. If the issue works its way to mainstream, word of mouth, and the media gets ahold of it, its then like wild fire... burning up your reputation now and damage control is the only way to extinguish it until proper investigation is conducted and a fix / resolution is committed.
Personally Fisker fueled the fire even more by attacking the customer and did the opposite of damage control.
