A meme circulating online in December 2024 purported to compare the number of deaths resulting from explosions occurring in the 1970s gas-engine Ford Pinto to fatalities from all Tesla electric vehicles (EVs) — a model versus a make. Snopes received reader emails asking us to look into the meme's claims. For example, one user messaged, "Verify the Ford Pinto [and] Tesla explosion meme."
The politically progressive Facebook page The Other 98% first posted the in-question meme (archived) on Dec. 3, 2024. It read, "Twenty seven people died in Ford Pinto explosions and the car became a joke. So, why have a whopping 232 Teslas blown up, resulting in 83 fatalities, and YOU don't even hear one thing about it?"
Other users subsequently reposted the same meme on Facebook, Reddit, Threads and X.
The bottom of the meme displayed a small bit of text citing inspiration from X user Jeras Ikehorn, who somewhat similarly posted (archived) on Dec. 1, "FACTS: '38 Ford Pintos' blew up and that car became a joke… So, why have a whopping '232 Teslas' blown up and YOU don't even hear one thing about it? Why?!"
We contacted The Other 98%, Ikehorn and Tesla to learn more, but to date, we've only heard back from The Other 98%, in a message that rebuked us for even asking questions.
Tesla Key Findings
Both the meme and the X post disproportionately compared statistics on one of Ford's past car models to those of all models of present-day EVs manufactured by Tesla.
The "232 Teslas blown up" number matches the tally on tesla-fire.com — an unofficial, nongovernmental website associated with a similar site called tesladeaths.com — whose owner gathered worldwide data on Tesla fire incidents between October 2013 through February 2024. According to the website (last updated in February 2024), 134 of the 232 Tesla-related fires occurred in the U.S., accounting for 70 of the 83 fatalities.
We emailed the owner or owners of tesla-fire.com and tesladeaths.com to learn more about who they are and what their motivations were in creating the websites, and will update this story if we receive answers.
Ford Pinto Key Findings
On Sept. 11, 1970, Ford introduced the Pinto. Despite a promising introduction, the subcompact car model's reputation suffered a severe blow in subsequent years following highly publicized news coverage — including an investigation published by Mother Jones magazine in the summer of 1977 — about rear-end crashes resulting in fuel tank ruptures. Those fuel spills, once ignited, led to burn injuries and fatalities for some drivers and passengers.
Then, on June 9, 1978, The Associated Press reported details of a recall of "more than 1.5 million Ford Pinto and Mercury Bobcat passenger cars with potentially defective fuel systems." United Press International (UPI) also noted Ford redesigned fuel systems for 1977 and later-model vehicles, and that a 1977 Pinto "met federal safety requirements."
In March 1980, a jury acquitted Ford in a criminal prosecution involving both the recall and the deaths of three women fatally burned in an Aug. 10, 1978, accident involving a 1973 Pinto.
Ford ceased production of the Pinto on July 18, 1980. On the same day, UPI reported "more than 50 deaths" had occurred specifically involving the Pinto's fuel tank design.
The 27 Pinto deaths cited by The Other 98% originated from a U.S. National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) report from May 1978. The report featured crash data about the Pinto and a renamed version of it called the Mercury Bobcat. The 27 fatalities specifically pertained to the years 1971 through 1976, involving 38 rear-end collisions ending in fuel tank damage. The report also mentioned an additional 24 people who sustained nonfatal injuries.
The NHTSA report noted crash data from the U.S. Fatal Accident Reporting System (FARS) — a nationwide census of fatal and nonfatal accidents. NHTSA introduced FARS in 1975. The data in the report specifically looked at the 30-month period of 1975 through June 1977.
FARS reported 1,417 Pinto-occupant deaths out of 1,626 total fatal and nonfatal accidents, broadly due to all possible causes. Thirty three of the 1,626 accidents involved fire, accounting for 41 of the 1,417 fatalities. Drilling down deeper, 17 of the 1,626 accidents involved both the rear-end collision problem and fire, leading to 11 of the 1,417 fatalities. (Other figures are available in the report on page 9. Page 16 also displays several key disclaimers about this data.)
Pinto Versus Tesla
With our additional research into crash data for the Pinto involving all possible causes, we chose to also conduct a year-by-year search for all Tesla vehicle incident documentation in the FARS census. Our search located information for 2013 through 2022 (for the U.S.), with 2022 being the most recent year for which raw data was available. According to the data, 321 total reported accidents involved Tesla vehicles, leading to 148 deaths. Thirty seven of those 321 accidents involved fires. Forty nine deaths occurred in the 37 fire-related accidents. (The tesladeaths.com website cited numerous news sources when logging different numbers for the same period: 100 fire-related Tesla incidents and 29 deaths.)
Since we were not able to easily compare the total number of Pintos and Teslas driving on the road, we turned instead to sales figures, the next best option.
Summary
The Other 98% published a meme disproportionately comparing U.S. fire-related fatality numbers for a discontinued car model from the 1970s to worldwide figures for all models sold in the present day by an EV manufacturer.
The meme's author called the Pinto a supposed "joke" and asked why consumers "don't even hear one thing about it [Tesla comparisons]." In our research, we noted that the labeling of the Pinto as a joke appears to be based on a misconception.
In 1990, UCLA law professor Gary T. Schwartz authored an investigation titled, "The Myth of the Ford Pinto Case." Rutgers Law Review published the work. Schwartz wrote, in part, "The strong claim that the Pinto was a firetrap entails a misconception. To be sure, the Pinto did contain a design problem that was non-trivial and to some extent distinctive. Even so, the number of fatalities that resulted from that design problem is a minor fraction of the fatality estimates relied on by those who present the 'firetrap' characterization. Moreover, when all vehicle fire fatalities are considered, the Pinto turns out to have been less dangerous than the average subcompact and only slightly more dangerous than the average car."
Ford's official Ford Performance blog celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Pinto in September 2021. The authors wrote that the car model "is all-too-often remembered mostly as 'a car fire waiting to happen,' due to some highly publicized fuel-tank fires in rear-end collisions of early models, and several subsequent fatalities." They also said the Pinto was the first car "killed by the media, who had a veritable field day with sensationalist crash reports after Ford become involved in criminal litigation."
Regarding the safety of Teslas, in 2023, the automotive resource Kelly Blue Book (KBB) published the findings of a study conducted by The Guardian, writing, "Novelty can mislead you. The media tends to report on rare and new things because things that are common and old aren't very newsworthy. But a few news stories can make an idea — forgive us — catch fire when there isn't any data to support it."
The report said the study revealed EVs "are less likely to catch fire than gas-powered cars." A separate study linked in the same article drew a similar conclusion.