You could look at fires / mile. But would that change the numbers by a factor of 200 (based on sigs source) to change the conclusion?
Sig.... I'd be willing to bet that at least 60% of those (gasoline) car fire statistics are cause by a shade-tree mechanic or a DITY'r working on on something in the fuel system; be it a fuel filter or a fuel pump or a fuel pressure regulator. At least 60%. Probably more. 50 PSI can find loose fittings and leaks pretty quick. Don't ask me how I know.
I'd tend to agree. Dripping gasoline that autoignites at 550 on a 700 degree exhaust mainifold will tend to lead to suboptimal results!
At this point you're rather desperately grasping around, and that in and of itself is the fascinating piece. At some point you rather randomly came to the conclusion that EVs were a fire hazard, obviously without any quantitative or factual research backing it up. But as soon as someone questions that original conclusion, oh boy do you double down on it! Even when they present a bunch of data that shows otherwise, you'll do anything, anything, to "prove" that original assertion that again you rather randomly arrived at. So let's follow your "logic" as it were. First off: So we show the math that shows that assertion is incorrect. Then we get a post that you deleted, always a sign that your being intellectually honest by the way. Just so you don't forget it though, I helpfully quoted it so I'll post it again here. You said When it was pointed out that in fact it was you who was wrong because you put the entire world in the denominator and the U.S. in the numerator, a person thinking rationally might stop and say to themselves "Why in the world am I making myself look like an idiot defending an idea when I can't really say how I arrived at it in the first place?" And if they had any self confidence whatsoever, admit that they were wrong and perhaps starting a post with "Wrong" was kind of a jackass move when it turns out you yourself were wrong. Or I guess you could delete that post, pretend it never happened, and give it another go. This time it's not the number of vehicles and vehicle fires that matter, it's the number of passenger miles traveled. One wonders, if that's really what mattered all along, then why in the hell did you spend half the afternoon arguing about the number of cars? One might also wonder, after making a fool of himself several times in one thread because of a lack of mathematical rigor, is this guy going to actually run the numbers this time or again just claim it's so because he "thinks" it must be? Sadly, it looks like we're going with the latter. As @newwurldmn pointed out, for this latest attempt to work the number of passenger miles would have to be a factor of 200 greater, which is pretty implausible. Also, if you're going to be strictly fair, I am asserting that an electric car is no more dangerous than a gasoline powered car, which everyone seems to agree is perfectly safe. A diesel, which would include almost every bus and the vast majority of miles traveled by vehicle, is inherently significantly safer than a gasoline powered vehicle from the point of fire danger. You can toss a match in a bucket of diesel and it will go out, as opposed to gasoline which will instantly ignite with a spark, although it's autoignition temp is lower than most exhaust manifold. So, your premise is again incorrect in any case but especially incorrect when excluding diesels. What you're experiencing isn't an insult to you, it's a well researched phenomenon we all suffer from. You're just presenting a textbook case. Your utter lack of self awareness may be somewhat unique, most people can see what's going on when it's explained, and almost everyone does when it's in plain black and white as we can see here. But hey, let's see what you can come up with next. Maybe that airplanes are actually safer than cars on a passenger mile basis (they are) so EV's are a terrible danger that will never catch on? Something more convoluted than that? Come on, impress me!
Some Teslas are 7 seaters, this debate is stupid and offtopic anyway. Real debate: Can EVs (and particulary Teslas) made profitably or not?
So for you it is scientifically correct to just take the numbers of cars. No average number of passengers, no mileage... A TESLA with 12,000 miles a year is for you equal to a truck doing 75-100,000 miles a year. Because you just add up the numbers of cars. You should also take worldwide numbers as over 50% of all TESLA's drive in the US. Conventional cars are all over the world. Taking only the US is deforming the stats hugely. It's like saying that an average cars costs worldwide 225,000$ and take Dubai as reference. With worldwide data, the calculation you made would be: 2 million EV and 1,282 million conventional cars. So not 0.4% EV's but only 0.15%. By taking only the US you turn 0.15 into 0.4, or a manipulative increase of 266%. With 0.15% of 174,000 fires the EV's would make 261 fires instead of the almost 700 you calculated.
Nobody knows, future will tell. When Audi took over Lamborghini, they installed a German management and German technology. In 1997 (before Audi took over) Lambo produced 209 cars a year, in 2016 they produced 3427 cars. The same can happen with Tesla.
The worldwide number of fires is going to be a lot higher than 174,000! And regardless the numbers are orders of magnitude off from any assertion that EVs are highly likely to catch fire, or even nearly as likely to do so, even with your faulty math. You're embarrassing yourself dude, first rule of holes is when you find yourself in one, stop digging! Seriously, this has potential to be a great learning experience for you, both prosaically about the specific issue of electric car fires but more broadly about the phenomenon of the inability of human minds to intuitively process low probability events and our blindness to that fact, something that's directly applicable to trading. You can choose to learn from that. I certainly did when it was first pointed out to me and I'm still thankful to the person who demonstrated it to me. Or you can do whatever it is you're doing. I'll leave you to that.
Right now I don't think any Western EV is made profitably. Maybe some Indian golfcart type EV can be sold with a profit, but that wouldn't sell in the US. Now Tencent could buy out eventually Tesla, fire the idiot in chief and keep it as a nieche EV maker. But it won't be a mass produced EV solving the world's transportation problem and that 20 billion in debt has to be paid off somehow...
If Tencent is interested, it will wait till TSLA has crashed to (or below) its fair market value before making an offer. (say, $30?) I think Tencent has a stake in a small Chinese EV maker. Tesla has missed the window of opportunity in building EVs in China. Now it's probably too late to make the move, as there are already over two dozen foreign and domestic EV manufacturers competing there. Tesla's market share is so small it's not even in the top 20.