Back in the late 70's I was employed by Ford
Motor Company
Australia, we had just launched a new Falcon that had a 100% plastic
fuel tank, I say 100% as there were a number other vehicles with plastic
tanks at the time but they all were connected to metal filling apertures, with the falcon the fuelling hose was placed into a filling aperture that was part of the plastic tank. The big difference was that the falcon tank was not earthed (eclectically bonded) to the vehicle chassis.
What came to pass was that when the vehicle was refuelled from a manual
pump, (not all that uncommon then in rural Australia) not a
commercial fuel refilling station, in very low humidity days static electricity was created between the moving fuel and the plastic tank and/or the rubber hose, with some dramatic effects.
Without going into all the findings and circumstances, the fix was to
recall about 60,000 (from memory) cars and fit a metallic collar to the plastic tank opening and bonding that to the chassis.
Of interest to boaties was that the authorities used the Ford investigations to resolve a few (and I do say only a few) unresolved boat refuelling explosions, where the initial thoughts were poor fuel handling or smoking during the refuelling process.
What was happening is that the fuel was pumped from an on shore
storage, in those days we called then 44 gallon drums, a hi speed hand
pump into a tank on a boat, without any
electrical bonding. On a day of some temperature and low humidity the resultant build up of static electricity caused sparks and the resultant fire works.
These days, but I'm not too sure, the approved fuel
delivery lines are electrically conductive which connects the supply and receiving tank, avoiding static build up.
Not to enter the statistical debate, but I wonder if those few instance in
Australia are included in the 3000.