Impact Report: Tesla Vehicles 8x Less Likely to Catch Fire, Batteries Degrade 15% After 200k Miles (2024)

Tesla’s mission is to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy by producing products far superior to fossil fuel alternatives and sourcing and manufacturing them sustainably. Tesla released its 2023 Impact Report yesterday, discussing their ongoing impact on the environment and the improvements seen.

Displacing Fossil Fuels

In 2023 alone, Tesla’s impact on the environment through its vehicles, Powerwall, and Solar Roof has been massively impactful – Tesla customers avoided releasing the equivalent of 20 million metric tons of CO₂e into the environment. That is the equivalent of 51 billion miles of driving an average internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle.

Each Tesla vehicle that is on the road avoids an average of 51 tons of CO₂e emission into the environment. After just 3 years of driving, a Tesla’s lifetime emissions are lower than those of a comparable ICE vehicle. After the average lifespan of a vehicle in North America – 17 years – a single Tesla will have exceeded that value 5.5 times over.

Integrated Ecosystems

Tesla offers comprehensive ecosystems of products to address clean energy and transportation needs, from Megapack, Solar Roof, and Powerwall, to the Model S, 3, X, Y, and Cybertruck.

Tesla Solar produces power for storage in Megapacks or Powerwalls, which charge electric vehicles. Tesla also produces some of their own batteries, for both its storage applications and vehicles, enabling a complete cycle.

On the software side, products like Autobidder, Full Self-Driving, and the upcoming Robotaxi work to maximize the productivity of electricity that is stored in vehicles, helping to further displace fossil fuels in a single ecosystem of well-designed products.

World’s Best EVs

Tesla’s Model Y is still the best-selling vehicle in 2023, a trend likely to continue in 2024. And it’s not for little reason. It is the world’s most efficient EV, capable of running Autopilot/FSD, and is considered one of the best safety picks in both North America and Europe. Tesla’s data has also proven that they are, on average, 7.63 times safer than a traditional vehicle when running Autopilot.

Additionally, the Model Y is priced $3,000 USD below the average new vehicle in the US before the Federal EV Tax Credit – a difference of $17,000 after factoring in the credit and gas savings over 5 years.

Battery Degradation

Battery degradation is often brought up as a concern for EVs and the environment. Batteries fade away, become useless, and cannot be recycled. According to Tesla’s data and experience, this is far from the truth.

In fact, Tesla has found that their batteries degrade about 15% after 200,000 miles – the equivalent of the average lifetime of a vehicle. And in fact, they do even better in the cold than they do in the heat, with better degradation performance in Canada over the US.

Another interesting fact is that Tesla vehicles in particular – are 8 times less likely to be victim to a vehicle fire, compared against the US average.

Sustainable Sourcing

Sustainably sourcing materials is essential to reach Tesla’s vision of a world with reduced environmental impacts. In 2023, Tesla recovered enough battery materials to produce 43,000 Model Y RWD vehicles, while also sourcing Gigafactory Berlin with 100% renewable energy.

Overall, Tesla solar owners generated enough energy to power all Tesla locations, including all the Mega and Giga Factories, and all other facilities – over 3 times.

Tesla has also reduced water use by 25% over the last 5 years for vehicle production, marking a new milestone low – at 2.48 cubic meters of water, versus 3.37 cubic meters of water for an average ICE vehicle.

In a post on X, Elon Musk recently announced that FSD drive modes would be getting a slight rename – Assertive mode will become Hurry mode.

Current Modes

Tesla introduced different FSD driving modes in 2021 so that drivers could pick a driving style that better matched their preference. Before driving profiles, Tesla let drivers pick the distance the vehicle would between the vehicle in front of them.

Currently, drivers with FSD have theee mode options available to them in Autopilot settings screen – chill, standard, and assertive. These three options dictate how far back the vehicle will sit in traffic, as well as how relaxed or aggressively it will maneuver through traffic.

Currently, there isn’t much of a difference between each of these modes besides how much space FSD is willing to leave between vehicles.

New Mode

The new mode naming scheme will be chill, standard, and hurry. We’re not quite sure what the difference between hurry and assertive will be, or if there will be any difference at all. It could be Tesla simply trying to avoid any issues with some NHTSA, or they could have some changes planned for the new hurry mode.

Hurry mode could attempt to stick closer to the speed limit, and change lanes more often to reach the destination sooner, while standard is similar to the current experience, and chill remains a bit more relaxed.

Release Date

At this point, given the sudden announcement of Hurry mode and the renaming – we’re not quite sure when this will be coming to vehicles.

FSD V12.4 was slated for release in mid to late May, but has apparently been delayed, perhaps due to the issues with the Spring Update. As such, if there are changes, we can probably expect the renaming and whatever unique features Hurry mode has – if any – will arrive with FSD V12.5 sometime in the future.

Tesla will be issuing an OTA recall for the seatbelt warning system later this month, according to paperwork that was published by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration this Friday.

Impacts

This recall is estimated to impact 125,000 vehicles across Tesla’s entire model range, including the Model S, X, 3, and Y. At this time, there is no indication of this recall reaching the Cybertruck.

Relying on the Cabin Camera

The recall addresses the driver occupancy sensor – a known problem since at least 2020 on some vehicles. This recall indicates that it may impact more vehicles than just those where people have noticed an issue.

The sensor completes the circuit and provides a signal when the driver is seated – but with some vehicles, even when the sensor is depressed by the weight of the driver, no visual or audio reminders will be given when the driver’s seatbelt isn’t fastened.

Tesla hacker, Greentheonly recently discovered that Tesla is going to stop relying on the occupancy sensors in its seats, which appears related to this OTA recall.

By relying on the cabin camera, Tesla will not only be able to resolve the occupancy sensor issue, but also reduce costs across their vehicles. Tesla currently use an occupancy sensor for each seat position.

Instead Tesla is expected to use the internal camera to detect occupancy of the seats, similar to their vision-based belt tensioners. Tesla already uses the cabin camera for various tasks, such as detecting whether there are any occupants in the vehicle and for driver monitoring. In FSD 12.4, Tesla is expected to rely more heavily on its driver monitoring system in order to remove the steering wheel nag in most situations.

Advantages of Using the Cabin Camera

Leveraging the cabin camera instead of weight occupancy sensors may actually become an improvement over the sensors that can be triggered accidentally.

If a heavy object or children’s seat is placed on a seat, it can cause the seat belt warning to be triggered incorrectly.

Software Update

This will be an OTA update, which means that as usual, Tesla vehicles will not have to come into service centers. Tesla is changing how the seat belt warning reminder will function – rather than relying on the sensor, it is expected to rely on the cabin camera to trigger the visual and audio warnings if the vehicle is put into drive or reverse and the driver seatbelt isn’t fastened.

There is currently no indication whether this update will be coming to Canada or other regions besides the United States in its initial release, but eventually we expect this change to apply to all regions.