Tesla's got two things going for it that Toyota didn't. It's an American company so it's not fighting against any xenophobic tendencies in the media or public. It's a singular incident, not a series of incidents. If more minor accidents similarly result in fires then they've got a problem, if they can show that most of the minor accidents (might be hard to get statistics on, but they can try and collect them going forward) result in nothing worse than needing repair work then they won't have an issue. It also helps that, in general, they're perceived as a very transparent company when it comes to safety.
