YYou may have seen that Kyle Vogt, the co-founder and CEO of Cruise, an autonomous vehicle company owned by GM ( GM ), resigned over the weekend. The resignation surprised some people because of how closely Vogt was associated with the company but wasn’t really that much of a shock to others because of the series of events that have befallen the company recently. After a voluntary recall involving around 950 of its robot taxis, Cruise went so far as to suspend all operations on public roads following a series of incidents and accidents that drew criticism from many quarters.
The sudden nature of the departure and lack of details offered by Vogt add an air of mystery, but his resignation appears to be more about operational failures than any intriguing backstory. There could, of course, be another shoe to drop but so far, it seems Vogt has been a victim of the concerns surrounding the safety of autonomous vehicles and EVs more than anything. Those concerns, however, are completely illogical.
A year or two ago, the concerns that hit the airwaves and the Internet were mainly about the safety of lithium-ion batteries. There have been a number of images of Teslas ( TSLA ) and other EVs being destroyed by fire, something that the worriers claimed was clearly the product of the batteries. That may be true, but it leaves out one important piece of information: vehicles powered by internal combustion engines (ICE) are much more likely to catch fire than those powered by electricity. If you get past the pearl-clutching and think logically, there’s a pretty obvious reason for this: gasoline cars carry a large amount of highly flammable liquid with them, while EVs don’t.
The number of vehicle fires in America has decreased by more than 50% over the last thirty years as vehicle safety has generally improved but was still 174,000 in 2021. Obviously, there are far more ICEs on America’s roads than EVs. However, if you consider this by looking at the number of fires per 100,000 sales, the reduced risk of fire in an EV is still evident. There is an average of 25.1 fires per 100k Evs sold versus 1529.9 for gas vehicles, according to a study conducted by Auto Insurance EZ and cited in this Autoweek.com article.
Photos of burning Teslas or whatever hit the news every now and then, but when was the last time you saw a story about the 476 fires that, on average, happen every day in gasoline or diesel-powered vehicles?
The same headline bias also exists when it comes to self-driving cars. Accidents involving autonomous vehicles (AVs) are reported breathlessly, but something that happens on a regular basis won’t make the news, so the fact that these stories are being reported tells you that they’re pretty rare. The approximately 6 million accidents that occur every year in gas-powered vehicles, however, belong to the “dog bites man” category, and most do not deserve a mention, even in the most local news. And yet because of the reporting, or perhaps because most people are terrible at risk assessment, there is a common perception that EVs and AVs add an element of danger to America’s roads.
I know that Elon Musk, the CEO and co-founder of Tesla, is a controversial figure these days, but this is one area where he has spoken the truth regularly. The media coverage of safety issues when it comes to EVs and AVs is ridiculous, and unfairly harms not only Tesla, but the entire advanced vehicle industry.
Vogt’s resignation this weekend appears initially to be about safety issues in the robotics field and is being touted by some as further evidence that the EV and AV industries are doomed. There is no such thing. Assuming there is no reason for the resignation yet to be made public and that it is simply what it appears to be, it is an example of a hysterical mob demanding, and receiving, a public sacrifice to assuage their anxiety about a “problem” that really doesn’t exist. “Witch hunt” is an overused phrase these days, but if it turns out to be security issues, the pressure on Vogt to resign fits that description.
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