Q&A of the Day – Are There More Car Fires Due to EVs?
Each day I feature a listener question sent by one of these methods.
Email: brianmudd@iheartmedia.com
Social: @brianmuddradio
iHeartRadio: Use the Talkback feature – the microphone button on our station’s page in the iHeart app.
Today’s Entry: Submitted via talkback. The question is regarding the cause of car fires based on the type of fuel used by vehicle types.
Bottom Line: It’s an interesting question that I can provide an answer to. There has no doubt been many sensational stories in recent years about a perceived rise in car fires due to the increasing adaptation of EVs by society. Probably none more so than what some Gulf Coast Floridians experienced after Hurricane Ian last year when numerous EVs caught fire, in some cases days after the impact of the storm, due to the batteries having been exposed to salt water. And that Ian example is a good place to play the perception vs. reality game. How many EVs in total do you think caught fire in Florida because of Hurricane Ian last year? The answer is eight.
In discussing whether there are more car fires than there used to be, the answer is going to be yes. If for no other reason than there being ever more people driving. Ten years ago there were 252 million vehicles on the road throughout the country – today that number exceeds 286 million. Several years ago, there was a narrative that younger generations aren’t as interested in driving as prior generations. There may or may not be truth to that narrative, however the fact of the matter is that there is zero evidence it’s translating into fewer vehicles being on the road. In fact, it’s just the opposite. Growth in the number of vehicles on the road has far exceeded population growth over the past decade. And of course the big change in the context of this conversation isn’t just that there are many more vehicles on the road, but that many of them, and an ever-increasing number of them are EVs which at least have the appearance of potentially causing more fires on roads as well.
Perception and reality can at times be in different places. As the case happens to be, this topic may well be one of them. Data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on car fires breaks them into three categories. Gas (with unleaded gas and diesel sharing the same category – indicating there’s not a measurable difference in fire risk between the two traditional fuel types), electric, and hybrid. So here comes the question. Of the three vehicle types rank the order in which you think there’s fire risk. Have your answer ready? Now for the facts...
Ranked by risk of fire:
- Hybrid
- Gas
- Electric
Surprised? In fact, the numbers are dramatic. Here are the number of fires per 100,000 vehicles driven:
- Hybrid: 3,475
- Gas: 1,530
- Electric: 25
Even if you guessed the order correctly, there vast difference in fire risk based on vehicle type is likely surprising. Hybrids are far and away the most fire prone vehicles on the road with greater than twice the fire risk of gas-powered vehicles as they carry the fire risk associated with both types of energy sources. But wow, isn't it interesting how minimal the fire risk with pure EVs happens to be? Hybrids carry 139 times the fire risk of EVs, and gas-powered vehicles are 61 times more likely to catch fire than them as well. But those factoids aren’t the only points of interest here. It’s also the circumstances in which risk is the greatest. In the case of hybrids and EVs, fire risk is greatest when charging while gas powered vehicles are at greatest risk when driving (and most specifically – when involved in an accident). And that point likely ties the perception and reality angle together to form the views some may have about the risk of fires with hybrids and EVs.
When there are auto accidents most people expect there to be issues and aren’t surprised when there’s a fire resulting from one. It’s much more sensational to have an automobile sitting in a garage or a remote charge station and to have it spontaneously burst out in flames. Especially when that has the potential to burn a house down. In other words, we’re far more likely to hear and see about the EV and hybrid fires when they happen due to the sensationalism than we are with those related to an auto accident. One note that may be worth mentioning for added context. Most pure play EVs are fairly new and thus we’ve not seen large scale performance of EVs fire risk as they age. The average age of a vehicle on the road is over 12 years currently. The first Tesla’s ever delivered (which were the first factory produced modern electric vehicles) occurred in 2008... Thus, only the oldest EVs have been on the road for about as long as the average vehicle has. But in general, it turns out that EVs are far and away the least prone to fires...unless you have them in proximity to salt water as we’ve seen.