In people's impression, electric vehicles are easy to cause fire accidents because of batteries. According to data collected by AutoinsuranceEZ from the national transportation safety board, transportation statistics bureau and government recall lists of recalls.gov, there were only 52 EV-related fires in the United States in 2021, compared with the lowest proportion of fuel vehicles and hybrid vehicles.
NIO ES8 electric SUV
Also in 2021, a total of 16,051 fire accidents in hybrid vehicles and 199533 fuel-related fires were reported across the United States. The number of accidents in fuel vehicles far exceeds that of new energy vehicles. However, considering that there are many more gasoline cars on the road than hybrid and electric vehicles, this figure is not too surprising.
AutoinsuranceEZ's statistics on car fires across the United States
To better reflect the frequency of fires between different types of vehicles, the agency also counted the number of fires per 100,000 vehicles. Among them, the fire rate of fuel vehicles per 100,000 vehicles is 1529.9, while the fire rate of hybrid vehicles per 100,000 vehicles is as high as 3474.5, which is the highest of the three. Surprisingly, electric vehicles, which have always given the impression of being prone to fire, are the best performers of the three, with a fire rate of only 25.1 per 100,000 cars, which is a hundred times the gap compared with hybrid models.
The reason why electric vehicles feel easy to catch fire, on the one hand, is because society has a higher degree of attention to electric vehicles, as long as there is a fire event, it will get high attention from public opinion, while fuel vehicles will not have such "high-standard" treatment. On the other hand, because the fire caused by lithium batteries is more dangerous than ordinary fires, and the difficulty in fighting is also higher, which may be the main reason why electric vehicles give people the impression that they are prone to fire.