About a month ago, this happened: a Tesla Model S (electric car) ran over a large piece of metal which punctured its battery compartment, and the car caught on fire. It was a big deal because, according to CEO Elon Musk’s blog post (first link above), that was the first time a Tesla has caught on fire.

Since then there have been two more similar incidents in which a Tesla was involved in an accident and caught fire. Naturally, people are getting concerned: three high-profile fires in one month is a lot! But these incidents get more than their share of attention because electric cars are new technology without a proven safety record. So the question we all should be asking is, how does the fire risk in a Tesla compare to that of a regular, gas-powered car?

Most of Elon’s blog post about the first incident discusses how well the safety features of the car performed after it did catch on fire, and how this would have been a catastrophic event if the car were gas-powered like a normal car, and now we should all be driving electric cars and so on. My interest here is purely …