Electric vehicle fires are rare, but hard to fight

Electric vehicles with lithium ion batteries burn hotter, faster and require far more water to reach final extinguishment. The batteries can re-ignite hours or even days after the fire is controlled, leaving salvage yards, repair shops and others at risk. Hybrid electrics, which have both a high voltage battery and an internal combustion engine, have a 3.4% likelihood of vehicle fires. Electric vehicles include battery management systems to maintain the right operating temperature for high voltage batteries inside, and those systems control how fast batteries charge and discharge. Improvements to them as well as the battery cells themselves promise to make EVs safer. Tesla recently announced it’s switching from lithium ion battery cells to lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries. Other major automakers including Ford, and VW are also substituting . . .