Wow...
Lots of Tesla haters here!!
The Tesla model 3 is the safest car ever reviewed by the NHTSA, by a fairly decent margin (with the Tesla model S and X the next two safest cars ever). There have been 2 people burned in a Tesla that I have heard of, both of whom were going very high speeds and crashed into a tree. And yes, it sucks for them, but the reality is looking at overall statistics it is still the safest car to be in on the road. Also, side note, the recent one was in a model S, not a model 3, which has the handles you can't manually open - the model 3 door handles are functionally no different than any other car door handle (I will concede the model S door handle does open some safety issues, which may be perhaps why they abandoned it for the model 3).
And yes, Tesla also raises fascinating questions about technology, i'll bring up autopilot before someone else does. There have been multiple people killed by self-driving cars, both car occupants and one pedestrian. And yes, it sucks for those people, but the statistical reality is there is enough data out there to show that Tesla's on autopilot are 9 times safer than a normal car - so yes there will be people that die, but far fewer than would have died without it.
As far as putting out the fire goes, it is a fascinating bit of chemistry. A "normal" fire with wood / gas / oil / whatever, needs the fuel source but also oxygen and heat, and are thus fairly easy to put out because you just need to take away one of those three things. A battery fire has its own fuel, its own oxidant, and makes it own heat - you can't deprive it of anything it supplies everything it needs itself. So you don't actually put a battery fire out, you just let it burn and contain the fire from spreading elsewhere.
Your comment of battery longevity is also quite simply wrong, unless you are basing it off 7 year old data from the original Teslas. Model 3 batteries are designed and tested to last between 300,000 and 500,000 miles, mostly depending on charging style (if you super charge to 100% full, it'll be closer to that 300,000 mile mark) - but even at that point by "last" they mean is down to 80% its original range. The first model 3 to pass 100,000 miles has the first real world data, and the battery has 98% of the original range. The powertrain itself is also tested to last over 1,000,000 miles, because the reality is in an electric motor and no transmission there is nothing that really wears out. So based on your example of driving a car 175,000 miles, you'd have to buy 6 gas cars to last the life of a single tesla with 1 replacement battery (so call it 6 cars to 1.5 cars). That's also ignoring the fact you would have saved $70,000 in fuel costs driving the Tesla for a million miles, and a likely 6-figure sum on oil changes and other maintenance. Also, they also had a very exciting lab breakthrough that should enable the batteries to last over 1,000,000 miles as well, see below article:
Elon Musk promised Tesla would soon have a million-mile battery, more than double what drivers can expect today. A new paper suggests he wasn't exaggerating.
www.wired.com
However talking about a normal person driving a million miles is kind of pointless, considering if you buy an average 16 year old a shiny new Tesla they will most certainly die of old age before hitting a million miles. Battery longevity is at the point where it doesn't matter for normal people if they make it better, it only matters for taxi drivers, semi-trucks (when they are available in a few years...), but most important utility scale energy storage. Speaking of Australia, the largest Tesla battery installation has been wildly successful, and is saving ratepayers a lot of money compared to the alternative of installing a gas peaker-plant. Starting now and accelerating over the next few years utility scale battery installations will go from niche to standard, and they will not only be good for the environment but they will save money in the process.
World’s largest lithium battery cost $90.6m but revenue is healthy, according to documents filed by French renewable company Neoen
www.theguardian.com
Honestly, like I said, people that buy any new sedan that isn't a Tesla simply made a mistake, and most of them because they simply don't understand how amazing Tesla's have become. I will happily sit here all day and discuss it, or just go to a Tesla show room and with 1 test drive you'll likely buy one that day - just make sure to put me down as a referral (
https://ts.la/brian90886 )