Tesla Master Plan: Part Deux

  • Thread starter Thread starter CodeRedR51
  • 1,770 comments
  • 209,228 views
eran0004
EV’s typically don’t explode when they catch fire. They may burn intensely and be difficult to extinguish due to thermal runaway in the battery. Under special circumstances a battery may explode, if the heat causes flammable gas to be released prior to ignition. Keep in mind that a petrol car may explode as well, if the gas tank is ruptured so that petrol fumes escape and mix with air prior to ignition.

By Swedish statistics there were 46 fires in EV cars in 2025. There were more than 1 million registered EV cars in the country the same period, which meant that 0.004% of the cars caught fire that year. No explosions were recorded, there were two cases where thermal runaway caused jet flames.

Meanwhile there were around 2800 fires in ICE cars that year. There were 4 million of those cars registered, so 0.07% of those caught fire during the year.

By those statistics, an ICE car is roughly 20 times more likely to catch fire.
Click to expand...
The numbers will always be skewed towards ICE cars simply because there are exponentially more of them in existence, but looking past that they're still going to be more of fire risk due to having multiple types of pressurized, highly flammable liquids flowing in an extremely hot central location through hoses that degrade over time and can rupture or melt in unpredictable ways. With an EV or hybrid, the battery packs likely won't experience thermal runaway unless they've been poorly manufactured, physically damaged or overcharged for extended periods.

EV batteries have a lot of flaws in their current state, but they're not Samsung Galaxy Note 9 levels of dangerous.
 
Back