Report: 511 EV fires investigated, what are the chances for an EV fire?

The EV FireSafe team is the only one in the world I know of so far, that gathers actual global data about EV fires, and investigates it (I’m grateful). EV FireSafe is an Australian company funded by the Department of Defence, and they provide EV fire trainings globally for emergency responders. Here’s their full story.

I like the idea of them being the ones putting together the studies, as the incentives are aligned — they have no reason to minimize the findings, nor make them look more significant than they are.

Their latest report (8-page pdf) says it has verified 511 incidents of thermal runaway in fully electric and plug-in hybrid car batteries — aka EV battery fires. Total. From 2010 to 30th of June, 2024.

What are the chances for an EV fire? And how does it compare to ICE?

Now, of course, there are some - perhaps even double more - incidents that aren’t possible to find records of, but consider this: we’ve got 40,200,000 EV+PHEVs on the roads on Earth. That’s a 0.0013% chance of an EV fire based on these findings. In other words (numbers), one in 78,669 EVs. You’d think it’s every tenth EV out there that catches on fire if you read the news though.

I’m afraid I don’t have reliable-enough numbers for combustion engine vehicle fires to give you a comparison on the 0.0013% chance, but as far as we’re playing with the rough numbers, this view of 2013-2017 US car fires would put the chance of a car fire at 0.4%. The article there is also a good take on why the widespread data from AutoinsuranceEZ is actually bs.

Which future would you opt for if you could —
4 out of 1,000 cars catching on fire (ICE), or
1.3 out of 100,000 cars catching on fire (EV)?

Anyway, back to the battery car fires.

Causes of EV fires in the past 12 months

In the past 12 months, the main causes of these battery fires have been:

• 119 from road traffic collision or impact with road debris;

• 45 from a battery fault (as in recalled batteries)

• 28 from submersion in a body of water and

• 22 from external fire spreading to the EV.

51% of the incidents have an unknown cause, mainly because it was not investigated. The analysis also shows the places of the battery fires: 117 in underground/enclosed spaces; 173 outside & parked, and 155 outside & driving.

489 cases had the more common ‘jet-like' flame’ reported in the incident, while in 22 cases, a vapor cloud explosion was recorded.

In the past year, ~15% of all incidents occurred while charging, a drop from 18% a year ago. In 80 cases, the EV was connected to energized charging, and in 10 cases it happened within an hour of the incident.

If you’re looking for some more data in “this niche”, I stumbled upon this great overview of the EV fires in the Netherlands (53-page pdf, shorter factsheet).

EV fires will go up, expect more headlines

We’re adding over 10 million battery-electric vehicles on the roads just this year. This, by default, means the total numbers of battery fires will go up, even if the ratio is much, much lower than for the ICE vehicles.

Luckily, the battery technology will only get safer over time (with some bad apples still likely in the mix forever), so it will be interesting to see what will it all look like in a few years.