Vehicle Fire Data

Tesla is committed to collecting, analyzing, and reporting the most accurate data available regarding vehicle and fire safety. To that end, we continuously refine our methodology, detection processes and algorithms for the collection and analysis of fire event reports involving Tesla vehicles, including events where the evidence indicates the fire did not originate with the vehicle. We learn about fire events from a wide variety of internal and external sources, such as available vehicle telemetry, customer service, and media reports. For this reason, we may not be notified of a fire event until months after it occurs. Therefore, to better reflect what we have learned about fire events involving Tesla vehicles, we now collect annual vehicle fire data for a year before publishing to capture all known events. This approach is also consistent with how the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) reports on vehicle fire events.

Our global data indicates that, between 2012 and 2023, approximately one Tesla vehicle fire event occurred for every 135 million vehicle miles traveled. By comparison, data from the NFPA and U.S. Department of Transportation indicate that one vehicle fire occurs in the United States for every 17 million miles traveled. Compared to average vehicles on the road, Tesla vehicles are comparatively even less likely to be involved in a fire event than these numbers suggest, because Tesla's data includes fire events that are caused by structure fires, wildfires, arson, and other causes unrelated to the vehicle, whereas the NFPA data excludes any fires where a structure is involved.

In addition, because Tesla is committed to reporting the most accurate and comprehensive data possible, we also provide yearly averages over the past 5 years, as illustrated above. These numbers reflect known fire events that occur globally in each calendar year, and they are normalized by vehicle fleet mileage that accrued during that year.