A small comparison of the Tesla Model S and Nissan Leaf in terms of safety and range

Today, electric cars are no longer a novelty on the roads and in the news. But the main problem of the news is that all statements and subsequent comparisons of the data from the news are made without taking into account real data and statistics, but for the same fragmentary news.
This post is based on web searches for statistics.

Security


One of the main arguments in favor of Tesla electric vehicles is its greater safety compared to cars with internal combustion engines in terms of spontaneous combustion. But actually the picture is not so simple.

Some statistics


Tesla Model S, produced since 2012, only about 107,000 on the road. There have been 6 fires today:

  • 10/01/2013 - something hit the bottom
  • 10/18/2013 - Accident in Mexico
  • 11/06/2013 - the second part of the bottom (after which they put protection)
  • 11/15/2013 - Tesla was on charge
  • 02/11/2014 - a standing car in Toronto just caught fire (the reason was never voiced)
  • 01/01/2016 - the case of a car ignition on a charge mentioned in the article on Gytims


Comparison of Tesla electric vehicles with ICE cars



For 107 thousand Tesla C and 2600 Roadsters, 6 fires are now coming out, or 0.0055% of the total.
At the same time, for 2013 this would mean 27,000 cars and 0.014%.

Here are the data on cars with internal combustion engines:

“From 2006 to 2010, an average of 152,300 car fires occurred each year” ( source ). At that time, there were 250 million cars in the United States, or 0.061% of car fires occurred each year.

There are also such statistics: “In the USA, there were about 219 thousand fires for 254 million cars in 2011.” This is 0.085% ( source ).

At the same time, the situation was worse in the period 2003-2007: 287 thousand fires on approximately 240 million cars, which makes up about 0.12%. Of these fires, 49% were caused by a car breakdown, 23% - problems with the electrical part, 8% as a result of deliberate actions, 3% - as a result of an accident and 5% - due to exposure to other sources of fire ( source ).

There is an order of magnitude difference with Tesla's indicators, which seems to speak in favor of the latter, but only fires are given without regard to the age of the machine. And Tesla is not yet older than 7 years old, so comparing these values ​​is simply incorrect. The average age of a car in the USA is 11.5 years ( source ), and fires are calculated for everyone from, relatively speaking, issued 50 years ago and yesterday leaving the passenger compartment.

Comparison with Nissan Leaf


Fire

Nissan Leaf, on sale since 2010, produced 200,000 cars.

One case - in December 2015. If you believe the comment on this link from the owner of the car , then the 2013 car just caught fire on the road on a flat road.

Since in the case of Tesla there were some accidents, we will drop them. Thus it turns out 3 cars out of 107 thousand "out of the blue" against one in 200 thousand. Statistically 5.6 times worse.
Note. I compare only two models of cars. Roadster had no fires, so he was excluded from the comparison.

Since I mentioned this data earlier in the comments, there was a fair remark from esc :

Well, in fairness, there will be more batteries in every car.


Therefore, further a small analysis of the batteries.

The Nissan Leaf has 192 cells with 24 kWh of power. Tesla is much more complicated. Over the entire production period, there were several models with batteries of 40, 60, 70, 85 and 90 kWh. The 85 kWh Model S has 7104 18650 cells.

Suppose all Model Ss were 90 kWh each.
The total capacity of Model S is 9630 MWh, Nissan Leaf - 4800 MWh. Then Model S 1 has a fire of 3210 MWh, while Leaf has 1 a fire of 4,800 MWh. Also not in favor of Tesla.

Now the most important thing. If we look at Wikipedia, we will see that not all cars have a battery capacity of 90 kWh ( Tesla Car Production ).

If you look at the data, you get the following picture:
Battery capacityYears of release
40 kWh2012 - April 2013
60 kWh2012 - April 2015
70 kWhApril 2015 - until today
85/95 kWh2012 - until today
Performance 85 2012 - November 2014
Performance 85/95 kWh November 2014 - until today
Ludicrous 85/95 kWh August 2015 - until today

Thus, not all cars out of 107 thousand produced have 90 kWh batteries. Also on sale is already a Nissan Leaf model line in 2016 with a 30 kWh battery. Consequently, the ratio is even more not in favor of Tesla.

Therefore, the argument about the number of batteries indicates that the solution was technically wrong, it was possible to get a safer car using batteries that were originally intended for automobile transport.

Accident Safety

The Tesla Model S had 3 crashes when the driver got out of the car without any serious damage. The Nissan Leaf did not have this. But they can still be compared, since both cars passed the Euro NCAP test. Below are the test data (tested Tesla Model S with a battery of 85 kWh):
CarTesla model sNissan Leaf
Year of testing20142012
Adult occupant31,431.9
Child occupant37.840,4
Pedestrian23.823,4
Safety assist9.35.9

Notes to the table - the data is given in points. The Nissan Leaf test was conducted in 2011, but points were recounted for the system used since 2012.

So, in general, Tesla is not much ahead in security (and in some ways worse), especially considering the three times the cost of Model S over Leaf.

Range


This item is somewhat out of the previous, but since it is often used in arguments, it should be explained.
Tesla claims for Model S a range of travel on a single charge from 330 to 450 km, while Nissan says much more modest numbers, namely between 100 and 200 km (according to independent tests, depending on driving style and weather for for a new car, this figure varies from 100 to 220 km).

The main difference in the approach to creating a machine. Tesla creates a replacement for a car with an internal combustion engine, stating that an electric car can be no worse than a car with an internal combustion engine in range and when charging (refueling for internal combustion engines). This is where all the solutions for the quick replacement of the battery and the network of superchargers go, i.e. an attempt to fit an electric car into the concept of a conventional car by the time of parking at a gas station. My personal opinion is an attempt to sit on two chairs at once.

Nissan uses a different approach - they use statistics. I have statistics for Germany, but in the whole world it is not very different. It consists in the following - a single trip of 95% of Germans does not exceed 40 km, daily run-in for 80% does not exceed 140 km. Therefore, positioning Leaf as a daily car for traveling on the home-work-home or home-work-shop-work route, a 400 km battery is simply an excess cost, like inlaid a phone case with Swarovski crystals to improve functionality.
Almost all car manufacturers for electric vehicles and hybrid cars use a similar approach to battery capacity - the range is selected based on statistics, without trying to compete where it is technically difficult and economically unjustified.

If you take other countries, there will be slightly different data, but, in general, the difference is not very large in terms of mileage. Yes, there are exceptions, but they are exceptions.

Notes. Data provided as of January 15, 2016. Data does not pretend to be 100% complete, maybe somewhere I missed something.

PS


In the process of discussing the article, several more sources with data on car mileage were found. They are listed below.

Comparison of Germany and the USA


GermanyUSA
Day tripfrom 0.1 to 2500 kmfrom 0.2 to 2497 km
The average44.3 km70.6 km
Median22.1 km41.6 km
Up to 200 km rides96.5%93.7%

For day trips up to 200 km:
GermanyUSA
The average31.1 km50.9 km
Median21 km38.4 km

Source, p. 316

Also for the United States there is the following information:
The average Thanksgiving trip in the USA by car is 350 km, and the Christmas trip on average is 450 km.
A source

Russian data


The average mileage of a new car in Russia is 20 thousand km. This, if just divided by working days - 80 km / day. But this is for a new car, and the total average mileage is 16,700 km or 67 km / day. If we consider that the average is more than the median, then we get numbers close to those in the United States.
A source

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