Elon Musk declares "no recall" over Tesla fires

Tesla founder Elon Musk announced in an interview yesterday that there will be not recall related to the three recent Tesla Model S fires. Speaking on a New York Times interview show, Musk said “There’s definitely not going to be a recall. There’s no reason for a recall I believe.” Later in the same interview Musk said “If there was something we thought would negatively affect safety we would immediately do a recall.” In fact, Tesla has done a recall on a seatbelt component in the past. Musk very eloquently took listeners and viewers through the topic step by step. His ability to communicate relatively technical content to a wide audience is impressive.

Musk again restated his previous opinion (most would say fact) that Tesla Model S cars are less likely to catch fire than gasoline powered cars. He did some quick math and came up with the conclusion that about one of every 8,000 Model S cars will catch fire. Using his own sources he says that therefore, the Tesla electric Model S is about 5 times less likely than an ICE car to catch on fire. Calling the headlines extremely misleading, he stated that “If fire risk is your concern, you’d have a great deal of difficulty being in any better car.” Musk also pointed out that there has never been a serious injury or death in any Tesla car. In the unlikely event a reader of this story isn’t aware of the history of Tesla, it has only produced about 20,000 vehicles. About 95% of those being the Model S sedan. Hence the true, but odd claim that nobody has been seriously injured in a Tesla is possible.

Musk was visibly emotional as he talks about his company. He even had to pause briefly at one point while making the point that another car could be as safe as a Tesla, but not safer, since you would have to have less than zero serious accidents. Musk is the current rock star God of all things automotive. The interviewer called him both Tony Stark (Iron Man) and also Steve Jobs during the interview.

During the interview Musk claimed that nobody ever reads about fires in gasoline powered cars. We would have to take issue with that given our many stories about fires and related issues in cars like the Ford Escape, which was recalled multiple times for fire issues. Here at Torque News we love to write about gasoline cars that catch fire.

As the popular expression “crash and burn” illustrates fires are very exciting. So is Mr. Musk.

Still image and video courtesy of Youtube.com, New York Times Dealbook, and investary0