511 electric cars caught fire

Electric car fires easily make the headlines every time. How often do they burn and what is the bigger story?

EV FireSafe have compiled the facts global data on electric car fires and investigated them. EV FireSafe is an Australian company funded by the Department of Defense that provides EV firefighting training for emergency responders worldwide.

Their report says that all have been tested 511 cases, in which all-electric and plug-in internal combustion cars (plug-in hybrids) have caught fire since 2010 until June 2024, 30. It should be noted that it is not possible to practically count all accidents, because there are 40 electric cars and rechargeable internal combustion cars in the world, and not all accidents are properly registered or impossible to find.

How likely is an electric car to catch fire? And how often does internal combustion burn?

Research data shows that the probability of an electric car having a fire of any degree is 0,0012%, in other words (numbers), one out of 78 electric cars. From the news headlines, you might think that every tenth electric car catches fire.

If we compare with publicly available data for 2013-2017 For US car fires in 0,4, the probability of an internal combustion car catching fire is 250%, in other words one in XNUMX internal combustion cars will catch fire.

Which vehicle would you choose -

• 400 out of 100 cars catch fire (internal combustion) or
• 1,27 out of 100 car ignitions (electrical)?

The difference in the probability of fire between the two drives is just over 300 times. It catches fire every year in Latvia about 600 cars or 1,6 cars per day. Because it's such a regular occurrence, an internal combustion car catching fire doesn't create as much of a stir as an electric car catching fire.

Causes of fires in the last 12 months

In the last 12 months, the main causes of electric car fires have been:

• 119 from a road traffic collision or impact with road debris,
• 45 due to battery manufacturing failure,
• 28 from immersion in a body of water,
• 22 from the spread of external fire on the electric car.

51% of cases have an unknown cause, mainly because the case was not investigated. The EV FireSafe analysis also lists the locations of fires: 117 underground/enclosed spaces, 173 outdoors while standing, and 155 outdoors while driving.

A “jet-like” flame was reported in 489 cases, while a steam explosion was recorded in 22 cases.

Last year ~15% of all accidents occurred while charging, down from 18% the year before. In 80 cases the electric car was connected to the charging device and in 10 cases this happened within an hour of the incident.

There will be more electric car fires

In July alone, 1,4 million electric cars arrived in the world. It is understandable that as the number of electric cars increases, the number of accidents, including fires, will also increase proportionally. Even if the ratio is a lot, a lot lower than internal combustion, we can expect the headlines to continue to blare each one. Until you don't get any more clicks for them.

Fortunately, battery technology will only get safer over time, so it will be interesting to see how it all looks in a few years.

By the way, remember the burning Fremantle Highway carrier off the Dutch coast that was carrying 4000 new cars and sank because the fire started as if from an electric car? Unsurprisingly, but investigation revealed, that the fire started from one of the internal combustion cars. The electric car did not suffer from the fire. Although the large amount of water at the bottom kind of wrote them off…