Q: Don’t Tesla vehicles catch fire a lot?

This is one of the most persistent misconceptions about Tesla vehicles, and it is contradicted by the data. Per the National Fire Protection Association and Tesla’s published statistics, you are statistically more likely to have a house fire than a vehicle fire in your Tesla. Gasoline vehicles catch fire at a substantially higher rate than EVs — it is not even close.

A few specific points worth knowing:

• 1. Tesla publishes vehicle fire statistics annually — see the latest data at tesla.com/safety.
• 2. EV battery fires are rare but highly visible when they do occur. Gasoline vehicle fires happen so often that they are not newsworthy at all.
• 3. Tesla’s battery pack is among the most extensively crash-tested systems in the industry, with active monitoring and isolation built into the platform.
• 4. Our upfit work preserves Tesla’s electrical safety systems — we electrically isolate all of our UP.FIT components from the vehicle’s high-voltage system and we do not splice into Tesla’s safety-critical wiring.

If your team has heard otherwise, the data tells a different story. This is another myth — busted.