People are wary of the new as they should be, but sometimes we can be so circumspect about what’s arriving that we forget about the shortcoming of what’s already here, already familiar. Elon Musk, who has more of a vested interest in electric cars than practically anyone, argues against the idea that the new technology, even with several recent Tesla fires, is inordinately dangerous when compared to fossil-fuel counterparts. Am excerpt:

“In order to get to that end goal, big leaps in technology are required, which naturally invites a high level of scrutiny. That is fair, as new technology should be held to a higher standard than what has come before. However, there should also be some reasonable limit to how high such a standard should be, and we believe that this has been vastly exceeded in recent media coverage.

Since the Model S went into production last year, there have been more than a quarter million gasoline car fires in the United States alone, resulting in over 400 deaths and approximately 1,200 serious injuries (extrapolating 2012 NFPA data). However, the three Model S fires, which only occurred after very high-speed collisions and caused no serious injuries or deaths, received more national headlines than all 250,000+ gasoline fires combined. The media coverage of Model S fires vs. gasoline car fires is disproportionate by several orders of magnitude, despite the latter actually being far more deadly.”