Key Takeaways
1. Tesla vehicles require up to 8,000 gallons of water to extinguish battery fires, raising safety concerns on ferries and other transport methods.
2. Tesla claims its electric vehicles catch fire eight times less frequently than the national average, based on a controversial measurement of fires per billion miles driven.
3. Fires in Tesla vehicles are challenging to extinguish due to thermal runaway, often necessitating specialized firefighting techniques and large amounts of water.
4. Tesla asserts that its vehicles are ten times safer than human drivers when using the Autopilot feature, with a significant reduction in accident frequency.
5. The safety performance of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving feature remains unclear, as Tesla has not disclosed its comparative safety records against human drivers.
Tesla has stated that it can take as much as 8,000 gallons of water to put out a fire in one of its battery-operated vehicles. The fire risks associated with electric vehicles are a common concern on ferries, with several of them even refusing to allow such cars to board.
Recent Incidents
Not long ago, a second car carrier ship sank after electric vehicles onboard caught fire, and firefighters were unable to extinguish the flames in time. However, Tesla, in its latest environmental impact report, aims to debunk the notion that electric cars are prone to frequent fires.
Fire Statistics
Using a somewhat questionable measurement of vehicle fires per billion miles driven, Tesla claims that its electric vehicles catch fire eight times less frequently than the national average in the United States. For every billion miles driven, there are 6.5 incidents of Teslas igniting for various reasons, whereas the average across all vehicle types in the US is 55. It’s important to note that Tesla cars are generally newer than the overall US vehicle fleet, which is nearing an average age of 13 years, setting a new record.
Challenges in Extinguishing Fires
The issue with fires in Tesla vehicles isn’t that they happen more often than in gasoline-powered cars, but rather that they are extremely difficult to extinguish, even with fire extinguishers designed for electric fires, like First Alert’s rechargeable model. When electric car batteries enter thermal runaway, they can ignite repeatedly, requiring firefighters to receive specialized training and often utilize equipment that punctures the battery casing to directly spray the cells inside.
For example, a single burning Tesla Semi required enough water—typically enough for 50 internal combustion engine vehicles—before the flames were finally put out, and this incident even necessitated the use of a firefighting plane as the Semi had crashed in a forest.
Safety Ratings and Features
In addition to fire risks and lifecycle emissions, the 2025 Tesla environmental impact report also shares safety data. Tesla claims its vehicles are ten times safer than a human driver when the Autopilot driver-assist feature is activated.
With Autopilot engaged, Tesla cars are involved in one incident every 6.77 million miles driven, while the average for the US is 0.7 million miles. Even without Autopilot, Tesla’s other active safety features result in an average of 1.18 million miles traveled between accidents.
Full Self-Driving Safety
However, Tesla has been silent regarding the safety performance of its Full Self-Driving (FSD) feature compared to human operators. FSD is an optional paid feature that is frequently used for navigating city traffic, which is often more unpredictable.
Recently, Tesla introduced unsupervised FSD to public roads in Austin to launch its Robotaxi ride-share platform and has just begun collecting safety data from this initiative. The city of Austin rates Tesla’s unsupervised FSD as Level 4 on the vehicle autonomy scale, indicating it does not require human driver input, but the safety record of the driverless Model Y vehicles that Tesla has started using for its Robotaxi service remains uncertain.
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