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by mikeash 2924 days ago
Meanwhile, about 300 non-Teslas burned in the UK yesterday, and about 300 will burn today, and tomorrow, and....
5 comments

Not disputing this happens to other cars but 300 a day - in the UK alone no less - seems plausibly high. Got a source to back up that figure?
It's closer to 40 a day, at least in 2016/17. Still, it's not a rare event, which I think was the point being made.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

From your Excel link:

Of which 50% are deliberate, and there is no breakdown of how many of the rest are random mechanical failure as opposed to having been involved in a collision with an associated fire.

I used the figures from accidental only - roughly 12k p.a. is around 35-40/day. Rough maths.
40 a day for the UK is still a rare event. Don’t forget that there are lots of old cars there and negligent owners.

But these news will make Tesla stick to higher standarda. So I don’t mind them.

Source: https://www.fireservice.co.uk/safety/vehicle-fires/

I realize many of these are not really the same thing (there’s a lot of arson) but the basic point stands.

Sorry, you meant 300 non-teslas will burn spontaneously, not as result of a crash or other emergency? Is that true? Seems to be incredibly high number.
No, that’s total fires, including arson and collisions and whatever else.
And how many non Tesla cars are on the road vs Teslas?
From a quick search, Teslas make up about 1/1,000 of the cars in the UK (30,000 out of 30 million, very roughly). If Teslas burned at the same rate as the average we’d expect to see one Tesla fire every 3 days or so. (Of course there are lots of reasons that wouldn’t be true, like a huge amount of fires coming as the aftermath of thefts, and Teslas are harder to steal than average.)
Is the figure 300 rhetorical or literal?
Literal: https://www.fireservice.co.uk/safety/vehicle-fires/

Edit: wow, voted down to -1 for answering the question and providing the source. Nice going, folks.

That's interesting, thanks :)
Devil we know...
Plus, things that are newsworthy are rare pretty much by definition.