That it sounds like it was written in Slashdot passive aggressive style: rather than just directly saying it was an extreme scenario, they used list of somewhat-hyperbolic-but-way-more-so-if-you-know-the-jargon descriptors of each element of the crash.

I think Tesla is probably exasperated that a couple Model S cars catching fire is international news while cars from other manufacturers catch fire every day and it's barely even worthy of the local news.

"The very definition of news is something that hardly ever happens. If an incident is in the news, we shouldn't worry about it. It's when something is so common that its no longer news – car crashes, domestic violence – that we should worry."

    -Bruce Schneier

If only this was how the human brain actually worked...

Sounded like a list of facts about the crash to me. What should Tesla have done in this situation? The media was spreading the falsehood that Tesla vehicles are more prone to fires than the average gasoline car. That is provably false. In this article they state that it is false and then give the very unusual sequence of events that led to the unusual outcome.

Media reports leave people thinking, "Electric vehicle? No thanks, too dangerous." Tesla's response leaves people thinking, "Well I have no plans to go 110 MPH through a round-about so I'll probably be OK." The latter is more accurate.

Part of me thinks that they are deliberately passive aggressive, like, "I can't believe people don't believe yet that our vehicles are safe, fine, let's just go all out and shove it in their face."

Only part of you?

Yes, definitely a contender for most ridiculous thing heard.

Edit: Sorry, "ever" heard.