I agree this is largely sensationalist / novel news reporting driving this (no pun intended). What I would like to see is an attempt to report the rate of fires / driven miles for both electric and more conventionally power cars; of course taking into account factors like the power / performance of the cars, relative age of the vehicles etc.

>Take a Tesla to an empty field, pour gasoline all over it, apply flame...

You forgot step 1 - Short TSLA

You would need to short an insane amount of stock for that to be profitable.

Options. Also there's potentially SEC stuff which happens to you if you do this, although it's less clear if you're not a professional or licensed, and don't solicit others.

And then there is the whole thing where if you are trying to manipulate the stock you maybe don't care who the car belongs to.

Yes, as rdl said, buy out of the money PUTS. You'll 5-10x your money. There are multiple ways to take a short position ;)

Anyway, this was in jest. But I also wanted to bring attention to the fact that TSLA is in unique position to be sabotaged for gain, more so than just about any other public company.

"Dateline" is still on the air, right?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_C/K#Sidesaddle_fuel_t...

Model S fires could be compared to Nissan Leaf fires, as they're both electric cars. Although Leaf is sold massively more than the Model S (Leaf is the most produced electric car in history).

Where are you getting your numbers from? The volt sold more than the leaf in 2012 by almost double. At best the leaf sells about 1500 a month. The model S is well over 3k a month as well. so I would like to see your sources on the matter.

Tesla sold 5.5k cars the last quarter. That's not 3k/month.

(http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/uni...)

The leaf sold 6375 during the same period (us only).

I think Teslas number was global sales. But still Leaf out sold teslas the last quarter in the US.

http://www.hybridcars.com/eight-us-sales-records-in-eight-mo...

Where did you get your numbers from?

First, 5500 is the total cars delivered not sold. looking for my source on total cars sold that quarter.

Wikipedia[1]. I meant an all-electric car. Chevrolet Volt is a hybrid car. Model S only has about 20k sales.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_automobile... 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Model_S

"Three fires in six weeks and all three related to accidents."

This fire is related to an accident? Can you help me out, and tell me which of the 21 pages I can skip to to read that part.

I've clicked on most of the pages, and I just see speculation that goes back in forth about whether there was an accident or not, based on a handful of pics someone posted.

> The company said the fire was the result of an accident and was not a spontaneous event.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/07/autos-tesla-fire-i...

But that seems to be based on this:

"It's possible that it ran over a piece of metal in the roadway and it got up in the engine compartment," police dispatcher Kathy Bryant said.

Apparently speculation by a police dispatcher now counts as confirmed facts.

It's interesting that people on HN seem to take whatever Tesla says as the gospel truth. Where as if it had been an established manufacturer (IE runaway toyotas) there would be at least some skepticism until there was at least some objective and trusted third party analysis and reporting.

I know, I was just noting a general trend that I have noticed.

Yes, it says Tesla talked to the driver. It doesn't say the driver says there was an accident. Why did tesla include the quote from the dispatcher if that wasn't part of what they were basing their conclusion on?

They have a confirmation from the driver, but instead of saying that, they include speculation from the dispatcher? I don't buy that.

Nice try.. but the Reuters article uses the forum that this HN post links to as the source for the part about Tesla talking to the driver... that forum has a post in it made by Tesla.. And no where in the part where Tesla says they talked to the driver do they say the driver said there was an accident.

In an update to that post, Tesla then linked to the Reuters article as a source for the quote from the dispatcher (and quoted the part from the article with the dispatchers comment) and says it looks like it was an accident.

You can't attribute everything to the driver simply because Tesla exchanged a couple of (unknown, unquoted) words with him/her.

Well, since your post every news agency has described it as hitting road debris. I grant you that at the time of my post that was most likely speculation but I went with the notion that most cars don't suddenly burst into flame without some sort of outside influence. Considering that this Tesla was apparently the only vehicle involved and another Tesla hit road debris to catch fire that was also the only vehicle involved, I decided that it was likely a repeat.

A couple hours ago someone said the police report was it ran over a tow hitch.

If true, that would be disconcerting to current and potential owners of the model s. If all it takes to turn your $100k car into a paperweight is a little more than a well placed piece of scrap metal on the highway people might be hesitant to buy this generation of their cars.

That is a bit hyperbolic. My father has had his transmission destroyed in a two year old car because of a bolt flying off of the road. Debris on the road is bad regardless of what fuels your vehicle.

Presumably these people have insurance on their 100k cars. Running over scrap metal isn't exactly good for other cars either.