> 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.