Here’s the problem with reporting on electric cars: According to the infographic below, there are about 6 million car accidents in the US every year, while 3 million people die in car accidents every year, but if one thing goes wrong with one electric car, it’s national news.
Tesla started collecting data on its users’ driving habits in October of 2014 and in November of 2015 activated its first Autopilot feature on these cars. Tesla has now released its first truly self-driving car. These cars have logged millions of miles of driving time since their release, and the first accident caused by autopilot just occurred April 29th when a Model S started itself up and drove under a trailer. One recent headline introduced the story this way: “Tesla’s first self-driving accident just happened: it’s time to start a serious discussion.”
So, 3 million people die in about 6 million regular car accidents every year, and no one questions that, but when Tesla’s product has one crash, we need to have a serious discussion. Similarly, there are about 152,000 car fires every year resulting in about 200 deaths and tens of millions of dollars of property damage (and never mind that these occur in cars carrying around its own thermal bomb in the form of a gas tank), but the handful of car fires caused by the lithium-ion batteries in electric cars — including about three Tesla cars (three total) — cause some people to question the use of electric cars and lead to demands for a federal investigation.
Tesla and other EV car makers do of course have an obligation to make their products as safe and as mistake-free as possible, even dummy-proof, but reporting on isolated or minimal safety incidents related to electric cars seems to lack a reasonable sense of proportion. Just look at the infographic below. That is what we’re willing to live with every year. We should be questioning that first.
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