"You Are Wrong about EV Fires" - MotorTrend Article

[Tooney]

Gas- and diesel-powered vehicles catch fire way more often than EVs, but you wouldn’t know that from the headlines.
https://www.motortrend.com/features/you-are-wrong-about-ev-fires/

 

[Reg]

I think the point is that when an ICE catches fire, it is often no big deal compared to when an EV catches fire. A friend of mine had a new Aston Martin a decade ago that came with a small fire extinguisher as standard equipment.

Secondly, the average age of an ICE on the road is over 12 years and as the article points out, "In fact, the analysis shows older cars are far and away the most likely to catch fire and the risk of fire increases the older a car gets." We will see what the data says when the average EV on the road is 10 years old.

Speaking of data, funny that the article points out: "The NFPA analysis even goes out of its way to mention the lack of data on EVs and makes no claims about the frequency or likelihood of EV fires." so kind of hard to conclude from that anything about whether people are wrong about Ev fires.

 

[magnitude]

The fact is, no one knows for sure. No American government agency we're aware of breaks out car fires by drivetrain, nor do they granularly break out car fires by vehicle age. There is no database that tells you how many EVs catch fire each year or what percentage of EVs catch fire.

So wait, do we not even know the breakdown of causes of a fire?

Because then that's all utterly useless to begin with. I hardly care whether EVs or ICE vehicles "catch fire" more often, I want to know which energy storage method (high voltage battery or fuel) and which drive train is more likely to cause a fire.

"Category X cars catch fire more often" is totally irrelevant if those fires turn out to be from e.g. some 12V system shorting out the 12V battery and catching fire, which both types of cars have.