Are Electric Cars Really A Fire Risk?
You might be surprised.
Last summer, a car park in Luton, UK, burst into a raging inferno out of nowhere. Social media personalities and many traditional media outlets quickly speculated the event was caused by an EV that spontaneously caught fire. Which, apparently, they always do. The fire brigade later confirmed that it was, in fact, a diesel car that started the fire. I thought this idea that EVs were a fire risk was relatively fringe until I had a recent gathering of friends and family in which they asked me why EVs are better, and almost every single one of them said something along the lines of “Yeah, that all well and good, but they catch fire constantly!” So, is there any truth to this notion?
Well, to put it bluntly, no.
A Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency study recently found that EVs are 20 times less likely to catch fire than petrol or diesel cars. Of the 611,000 EVs on their books in 2022, only 25 caught fire, a rate of 0.004% catching fire each year. Meanwhile, the 4.4 million combustion cars on their books suffered 3,400 fires in 2022, or a rate of 0.08% catching fire each year. A US insurer found that EVs suffer 25 fires per 100,000 sold, while combustion vehicles had 1,530 fires per 100,000 sold, suggesting that EVs are over 60 times less likely to catch fire. EV FireSafe has verified that fewer…
