According to foreign media reports, Tesla released its Q4 2019 "Automotive Safety Report" and emphasized that accidents involving Tesla remain rare compared to other vehicles on the road, and that overall, Tesla electric cars are three or four times safer than other vehicles.
Outside concerns about the safety of Tesla's electric cars center on two main areas, the aforementioned Autopilot system (the current state of the art is stuck at the assisted driving stage), and the combustion of lithium batteries. These two factors have already caused a series of accidents around the world, both of which have triggered a great deal of attention from the safety regulators of the governments of the countries in which they operate.
Statistically, Tesla's vehicle safety report for the fourth quarter of 2019 showed that Tesla EVs with Autopilot activated had an average of one accident in 4.91 million kilometers. For owners who did not activate the Autopilot system but used the vehicle's active safety features, there was one accident for every 3.36 million kilometers driven. If Autopilot is not used and active safety measures are not used, Tesla owners worldwide experience one accident for every 2.62 million kilometers driven. Overall, these numbers are far better than data recorded by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which shows an average of one crash per 770,000 kilometers in the United States.
When it comes to combustion, Tesla Inc. concluded that for every 280 million kilometers traveled between 2012 and 2019, there was one Tesla vehicle combustion accident. By comparison, the U.S. Department of Transportation and the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) report that there is one vehicle combustion incident for every 30.4 million kilometers traveled by a social vehicle. This one is an improvement over the frequency of vehicle burns in the 2012-2018 timeframe, during which Tesla recorded one vehicle burn for every 270 million kilometers traveled.
This article comes from the authors of the Motorola Car Family, and does not represent the views of Motorola's position.