Since the three recent cases of fires in Tesla Model S electric sedans over five weeks, company co-founder and CEO Elon Musk has been on a campaign, telling the Business Insider Ignition conference last week that "there’s definitely not going to be a recall," criticizing the media for its coverage and maintaining that Teslas have a far lower fire risk than gasoline-powered vehicles.

Today, Musk announced that Tesla would make a pair of software updates to the 19,000 Model S sedans on the road and changes to the warranty that he said should help address any concern among customers — and that U.S. auto safety regulators had opened a formal probe into the Model S, one that Musk says Tesla requested to clear the air. Musk's aggressive push back against the coverage of the fires goes against the typical auto industry playbook for dealing with potential safety recalls; automakers often do nothing more than acknowledge cooperation with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration probe, and make a brief announcement if and when a probe leads to a recall.

But as Musk has shown before, Tesla is anything but a typical company.

In an unusual 1,300-word blog post, Musk says the attention paid to the Model S fire far outweighs that paid to even deadly gasoline-powered fires, of which about 170,000 a year are reported in the United States. He also calls the Model S the safest vehicle on the road, noting that no one has ever died in a Model S crash.

"Considering the odds in the absolute, you are more likely to be struck by lightning in your lifetime than experience even a non-injurious fire in a Tesla," Musk says. Later, in the same post, he adds: "The Model S is safer in an accident than any other vehicle without exception. It is literally impossible for another car to have a better safety track record, as it would have to possess mystical powers of healing."

Still, Tesla will make the over-the-air software updates to slightly raise the Model S suspension height and allow drivers more control over those settings, changes Musk says "is about reducing the chances of underbody impact damage, not improving safety. The theoretical probability of a fire injury is already vanishingly small and the actual number to date is zero." This distinction matters: Had Tesla deemed the software change a safety improvement, the company would have been required by federal law to report it as a safety recall.

Tesla will also change its warranty to cover fire damage, even if caused by a driver. And while calling a NHTSA probe a waste of government resources, Musk says if NHTSA uncovers a way to improve the Model S, "we will immediately apply that change to new cars and offer it as a free retrofit to all existing cars."

NHTSA offered only a brief comment on the opening of a preliminary investigation, the first step in a long process that can, but doesn't always, lead to a recall. It's unheard of for a company to publicly ask NHTSA for such a probe, but once opened, the agency may take months to reach a conclusion — and there's no other way for Tesla to close it.