Good NCAP ratings, but a new study shows Tesla is the most dangerous brand on the road for safety outcomes. And AutoPilot is not a safety feature. Here are the receipts.
Just read how Tesla is releasing a fleet of Robotaxis. For now there is a teleoperator to help drive it. This says volumes of how poorly designed this car is. It will never be self-autonomous and at best will be trying to compete with similar costs as other car hailing services such as Lyft. I don’t believe a remote teleoperator will be as safe as an on board driver. It will not be able to compete with Waymo which unlike Tesla’s Robotaxis uses LiDar and much safer. When the first reports of injuries and deaths come up it will negatively affect Tesla share price. Musk again puts cost savings above human safety. His refusal to install LiDar will be his undoing.
I’ll start my comment with a caveat—I’m not a vehicle safety expert. That said, I believe comparing cars, safety wise, is an exceedingly difficult endeavor (the number of variables is nearly infinite especially when automation is involved). Consequently, here I just want to share my experience as a long time Tesla driver.
As an enthusiast of electric transportation, I got a Tesla over 13 years ago (the only electric vehicle available at the time). I still own that car, which doesn’t have any automating features, and I can report no incidents, except for a couple of speeding tickets. Tesla, and I believe all other electric cars, require some adjustments of driving habits. For instance, these cars offer breath taking acceleration and employ regenerative breaking. You have to be very careful when your vehicle needs just 3 sec to accelerate from 0 to 60 mph. Otherwise, you will enter the statistics in the car crash category. Regenerative breaking is a great feature which increases the driving range particularly in heavy traffic. Once more, you need to be careful. If you try to recharge your battery by excessively avoiding using the brakes you may rear end the vehicle in front of you (AEB is certainly useful in this case, but my old Tesla doesn’t have it). Another aspect is that on slippery pavement, on snow for instance, an electric car may behave differently when regenerative breaking occurs, i.e., the vehicle may be less stable (particularly in the case of rear wheel traction). Again, the drivers must adjust. Based on my driving experience, it will take some time until automation will be able to cope with such details.
Finally, I think a comparison between the safety of electric vehicles would be interesting. However, the result may be biased, because the number of Tesla cars on the US roads is much higher than any other brand.
Statistics is a well understood field. Crashes rater per car at fixed mileage allows apples to apples comparison.
Fatal Accident rate / billion miles is an apples to apples comparison . . . tabular data above shows 5.6 fatal Tesla accidents per billion miles. And note this is 2X all makes statistics of 2.8 fatal accidents per billion miles. So you are twice as likely to experience a fatal accident in a Tesla based on data.
How does this fit in with the data presented here? https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport Based on that one could conclude that Teslas are indeed a lot safer with Autopilot technology turned on. Are they measuring different things? Or do you think these numbers are wrong/biased?
The paper in point (2) explains why that data is so misleading. For example it does not account for differences between limited access road miles and other miles which have much different crash rates. Also, any new car is MUCH better than fleet average at crashes. Teslas do not report all crashes (mostly they just report ones where air bags deploy), and so on.
The various points in the post above show that the Tesla analysis is unreasonably optimistic.
Yes, Elon puts profits before safety. All the while publicly bragging about FSD. Which is near garbage without LiDar. Explains the numerous class action lawsuits against Tesla’s FSD. How many more will die because he is too proud to mention its shortcomings?
Just read how Tesla is releasing a fleet of Robotaxis. For now there is a teleoperator to help drive it. This says volumes of how poorly designed this car is. It will never be self-autonomous and at best will be trying to compete with similar costs as other car hailing services such as Lyft. I don’t believe a remote teleoperator will be as safe as an on board driver. It will not be able to compete with Waymo which unlike Tesla’s Robotaxis uses LiDar and much safer. When the first reports of injuries and deaths come up it will negatively affect Tesla share price. Musk again puts cost savings above human safety. His refusal to install LiDar will be his undoing.
I’ll start my comment with a caveat—I’m not a vehicle safety expert. That said, I believe comparing cars, safety wise, is an exceedingly difficult endeavor (the number of variables is nearly infinite especially when automation is involved). Consequently, here I just want to share my experience as a long time Tesla driver.
As an enthusiast of electric transportation, I got a Tesla over 13 years ago (the only electric vehicle available at the time). I still own that car, which doesn’t have any automating features, and I can report no incidents, except for a couple of speeding tickets. Tesla, and I believe all other electric cars, require some adjustments of driving habits. For instance, these cars offer breath taking acceleration and employ regenerative breaking. You have to be very careful when your vehicle needs just 3 sec to accelerate from 0 to 60 mph. Otherwise, you will enter the statistics in the car crash category. Regenerative breaking is a great feature which increases the driving range particularly in heavy traffic. Once more, you need to be careful. If you try to recharge your battery by excessively avoiding using the brakes you may rear end the vehicle in front of you (AEB is certainly useful in this case, but my old Tesla doesn’t have it). Another aspect is that on slippery pavement, on snow for instance, an electric car may behave differently when regenerative breaking occurs, i.e., the vehicle may be less stable (particularly in the case of rear wheel traction). Again, the drivers must adjust. Based on my driving experience, it will take some time until automation will be able to cope with such details.
Finally, I think a comparison between the safety of electric vehicles would be interesting. However, the result may be biased, because the number of Tesla cars on the US roads is much higher than any other brand.
Statistics is a well understood field. Crashes rater per car at fixed mileage allows apples to apples comparison.
Fatal Accident rate / billion miles is an apples to apples comparison . . . tabular data above shows 5.6 fatal Tesla accidents per billion miles. And note this is 2X all makes statistics of 2.8 fatal accidents per billion miles. So you are twice as likely to experience a fatal accident in a Tesla based on data.
How does this fit in with the data presented here? https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport Based on that one could conclude that Teslas are indeed a lot safer with Autopilot technology turned on. Are they measuring different things? Or do you think these numbers are wrong/biased?
Maybe the difference is accidents vs. fatalities?
The paper in point (2) explains why that data is so misleading. For example it does not account for differences between limited access road miles and other miles which have much different crash rates. Also, any new car is MUCH better than fleet average at crashes. Teslas do not report all crashes (mostly they just report ones where air bags deploy), and so on.
The various points in the post above show that the Tesla analysis is unreasonably optimistic.
Yes, Elon puts profits before safety. All the while publicly bragging about FSD. Which is near garbage without LiDar. Explains the numerous class action lawsuits against Tesla’s FSD. How many more will die because he is too proud to mention its shortcomings?