ICE Vehicle Fires

ICE Vehicle Fires

As we all know, there is a lot of misinformation related to EVs out there. One Chevy Volt fire in a NHTSA test and the EV haters come out of the woodwork with bogus claims that EVs are 'fire hazards'. Apologies if this is a duplicate (Tesla forum search is broken), but as I sometimes suffer from XKCD386 syndrome ( ), I ran across this statistic:

In 2010, there were 184,500 highway vehicle fires which resulted in 285 deaths, 1,440 injuries, and $1 billion dollars in direct property damage. We all know gas is flammable, but I found the size of this number staggering. If anything else contributed to this much damage and death annually, I'm sure there would be many taking up arms trying to get it banned!

The next time someone tries to spin a yarn to you about EVs having any issue whatsoever with fires, feel free to educate them on the Molotov cocktail they're driving around.

DHrivnak | January 12, 2012

How true, I have educated many a person that I would much rather drive my safer, less fire prone electric any day.