EV Fire Concerns Are Real But Overblown

EV concerns continue to mount as pressure, largely from Petroleum companies, is placed on EVs with false arguments that no one wants them; they aren’t green or are dangerous and can catch fire easily. I’ve owned 3 EVs, and while I had a severe Lithium-Ion battery fire in my garage, it was due to an early battery for an E-Bike, not a car, back in the mid-90s. And I could put the fire out (Largely because the battery had fully combusted and had moved to the rubber tires, which were relatively straightforward to deal with (I was trained as a firefighter on boats some years ago).

Generally, with regard to fire, gas cars are far more likely to catch fire than EVs. EVs, however, are new, and thus, when they catch fire, it is far more newsworthy, which helps create the impression that they are unsafe. I expect interest will die down over time, but for the next several years, except for places like Norway and China, where EV sales exceed gas car sales, we’ll continue to see excessive focus on EV safety.

Australia’s EV Fire Study

Australia’s EV FireSafe has completed a study funded by the Department of Defense and found that in the last 14 years, there were 570 EV fires globally (accurate to September 2024). Compared to ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) fires, EVs are estimated to be 20 to 80 times less likely to catch fire. When they catch fire, the fires are more complex to put out mainly because the now damaged battery cells continue to dump energy at extremely high levels until they are destroyed, resulting in massive heat buildup.

 According to FireSafe, causes for these fires include physical battery damage (crash, hitting road debris, water intrusion into the armored battery containment component), manufacturing defect, or an external fire that moves to the EV. There have also been fires while the car is charging, but they too don’t happen often, and more often, fires initially attributed to EVs turned out to be the result of other causes (nearby gas vehicles catching fire. South Korea has reported three fires in car parks, and they have passed laws restricting EV charging in car parks, which may be overkill, but given they’d had three fires in them, it is prudent until they determine the cause.

Manufacturing Defects

One of the big problems with EVs is that we didn’t do much battery research for most of the last century. Lead acid was pretty much good enough as far as the industry was concerned, and GM’s EV-1 test vehicle used that battery type for its less than stunning 70-90 mile range. The 27 advanced Lead Acid batteries it carried had the energy equivalent of half a gallon of gas. It took between 12 and 16 hours to recharge the cars. Before the end of that car’s run, they did swap out the lead acid batteries for Nickle Metal Hydride batteries doubling the range, but Nickle Metal Hydride batteries don’t age well; they lose charging capacity if you don’t nearly always drain and then recharge them, and they had nowhere near the energy density of Lithium-Ion but, even though they’d planned to go to Lithium Polymer batteries (same that used to be used in laptops) that technology didn’t mature enough before the EV-1 test was canceled. 

What was particularly interesting was the folks who had the EV-1 loved it, even with the limited range. They mostly used it as a second car, and when GM killed the program, the people in the trial were pissed. But it died because they couldn’t get Lithium batteries to work at scale, so the EV-1 was killed in 1999.

This means that there were only a few years until Telsa brought out their troubled sports car in 2008, and then their real car, the Model S, entered the market in 2012, or just 13 years after GM decided that battery EV density sucked. Most every other EV company started after this and was learning as they went, which is largely why there have been a considerable number of EV battery recalls over the last several years.   

However, solid-state batteries are entering the market, and EV battery makers have learned a great deal from these recalls, making future EV batteries far safer than the initial offerings.

Wrapping Up:

EV fires are no joke, but they get an unusual amount of coverage, and those who make EVs are being extra cautious with their advice. If you get a notice from your dealer indicating your battery is under recall and not to charge it inside, take it seriously. Even though such a fire is unlikely, the risk of taking out your house and your family is high enough to be concerned.

My own EV’s car battery is under recall. Still, Audi has it remotely monitored and indicated that if it looks like the battery is damaged (so far, no indication), they will notify me immediately and take remedial action remotely to protect my home and car. I expect this will be the same over time with other EV makers, and I expect that with the coming battery advances outside of fires caused by accidents, EVs will become even less likely to catch fire in the future.

Rob Enderle is a technology analyst at Torque News who covers automotive technology and battery developments. You can learn more about Rob on Wikipedia and follow his articles on Forbes, X, and LinkedIn.