On July 22, a Model X driven by entertainer Justin Lin was involved in a car accident and caught fire while driving. According to reports, the fire spread to the driver’s seat of the vehicle only 5 seconds after passersby rescued the person involved. The cause of the vehicle accident and fire is under investigation and no concrete results are available yet.
Sina Technology Hua Zijian
On the same day, Tesla customer service reply said that it is not clear the cause of the fire, but the body is not particularly easy to fire material. “The cause of the fire cannot be confirmed for the time being. If there is an emergency, the main passenger has a mechanical opening door device that can force the door to unlock in the event of a power failure, and the rear passengers can escape through the trunk. No matter what brand of car, this extreme situation will be considered, the regular vehicle will not have a particularly flammable material.”
However, according to an auto blogger, on July 26, Tesla China produced a comparison chart in an attempt to prove that pure electric cars have a much lower fire rate than fuel cars.
The comparison chart shows that the statistics are derived from AutoinsuranceEZ, a U.S. auto insurance referral website, and are based on comprehensive research and analysis using the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS), and U.S. government recall data as the source.
The results show that if you count the number of fires per 100,000 vehicles of each type, hybrid cars are 3474, fuel cars are 1529, and pure electric cars are only 25. Therefore, the conclusion is that the probability of fire in pure electric cars is only one-sixtieth of fuel cars and one hundred and forty of hybrid cars.
In this regard, Sina Technology contacted Tesla China’s public relations people, but did not get a response.
Tesla China this statistical analysis or only for the U.S. market. Sina Technology found that AutoinsuranceEZ had conducted statistics based on data from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) and government recall data from Recalls.gov – there were only 52 electric vehicle fires in the U.S. in 2021, and during the same period, the U.S. hybrids had 16,051 fires and fuel vehicles had 199533 fires in the same period.
This is different from the situation in the Chinese market, and the data does not support the application of this statistical analysis by Tesla to the Chinese market.
On July 22, at the 2022 World Power Battery Conference held in Yibin, Sichuan, Academician Sun Jinhua, member of the European Union Academy of Sciences, professor at the University of Science and Technology of China, and chief scientist of the National “937” Program, cited data from the Fire and Rescue Bureau of the Ministry of Emergency Management to prove that the probability of fires in electric vehicles in 2021 The fire accident rate is higher than that of traditional fuel vehicles, and with the growth of electric vehicle ownership in recent years, electric vehicle fire accidents have shown rapid growth.
According to the Ministry of Emergency Management Fire and Rescue Bureau, in FY2021, more than 3,000 electric vehicle fire accidents occurred nationwide, with a probability of catching fire of about 0.03%+, slightly higher than the 0.01%-0.02% annual fire accident rate for traditional fuel vehicles.
On June 14, the first quarter of 2022 data released by the Fire and Rescue Bureau of the Ministry of Emergency Management showed that 19,000 fires of various types of vehicles were reported, of which 640 involved new energy vehicles, up 32% year-on-year, much higher than the average 8.8% increase in vehicle fires, meaning an average of more than 7 new energy vehicle fires per day.
On the other hand, the sales and market penetration of new energy vehicles in China are at record highs. Data show that in the first half of this year, China’s new energy vehicle production and sales were 2.661 million and 2.6 million respectively, both up 1.2 times year-on-year, with production and sales at record highs and market penetration reaching 21.6%.
With major electric vehicle brands recent vehicle fire accidents.
On July 22, 2022, a serious traffic accident occurred on Zhongzheng North Road in Taoyuan City, Taiwan Province of China, in which a white Tesla Model X lost control and crashed into a bridge pier and caught fire, with a fierce fire at the scene and the front of the car caught in flames. According to reports, the person involved in the crash was entertainer Lin Zhiying.
On the morning of July 21, a post-collision fire accident involving a Tesla brand model occurred in Hangzhou.
In early July, a Tesla Model 3 in Qingdao was struck by a turning vehicle in a straight line and caught fire after the collision.
In April 2022, a Tesla Model 3 in Dalian caught fire in the front compartment after a collision and the occupants were trapped, but fortunately they were rescued by enthusiastic people and no casualties were caused.
On June 13, 2022, a Huawei cell phone store in Ordos caught fire, caused by a fire of an Askworld M5 show car parked inside.
On June 12, a stationary parked BYD Song caught fire at Yinxia Plaza in Zhuhai, Guangdong.
On June 6, three BYD electric cars caught fire in Wuhan, Hubei, Foshan, Guangdong and Guigang, Guangxi on the same day.
In November 2021, a BYD Qin Pro EV caught fire while charging with a star charging pile in the underground parking lot of One Zhongguancun in Beijing. Two other fires of the same model occurred in Shenzhen and Yantai, in May and October of that year, respectively, both after charging was completed.
In July 2021, an Azera EC6 electric vehicle caught fire in a collision in Pudong, Shanghai, severely damaging the vehicle and killing the driver in the accident.
In July 2022, a Xiaopeng P7 caught fire at the North Shanghai Shopping Center section of Hippocampus Highway in Yangxing Town, Baoshan District, Shanghai, the accident did not cause any casualties.
In March 2022, a Xiaopeng G3 spontaneously combusted in a small area near Baisilong Village in Longhua District, Shenzhen, and the entire vehicle was burned to scrap.
