Electric vehicles catch fire far less often than gas cars

A single video of an EV in flames spreads across social media in hours. The comments pile up: proof that electric cars are dangerous. Proof they're not ready. But when you step back from the viral moment and look at what actually happens on roads across the world, the story flips entirely.

Electric vehicles do catch fire. But they catch fire significantly less often than gasoline cars — sometimes by 50 to 100 times less often, depending on where you look.

After more than a decade of widespread EV adoption, the data is no longer ambiguous. In the United States, gasoline vehicles experience roughly 1,500 fires per 100,000 sold. Electric vehicles experience about 25 fires per 100,000 sold. Sweden, one of the world's most electrified car markets, recorded 23 EV fires among 611,000 electric vehicles in 2022, while 3,400 fires occurred among 4.4 million gasoline and diesel vehicles — making combustion cars about 20 times more likely to burn. Poland's State Fire Service data from 2020 to 2025 shows the same pattern: of 51,142 total vehicle fires, just 87 involved electric vehicles.

Yet the perception persists. Why? Because a gasoline car fire is routine. It happens so often that it rarely makes news unless someone dies. An EV fire is still unusual enough to feel exceptional. When one occurs, it gets filmed, shared, dissected, and replayed. A single incident generates more attention than thousands of ordinary gasoline vehicle fires combined.

Why EV fires feel more dangerous than they are

There's also a technical reason for the outsized attention. Lithium-ion battery fires behave differently from fuel fires. They can burn longer, resist standard suppression methods, and sometimes reignite after appearing extinguished. This creates prolonged scenes with firefighters, road closures, and dramatic visuals — reinforcing the sense that something uniquely dangerous is happening, even though the event itself is statistically rare.

Viral images compound the problem. Photos of burning EVs circulate without context, sometimes misattributed to battery failures when crashes or external factors were actually responsible. Over time, these images harden into cultural evidence, even when they're not representative of what typically happens.

Most EV fires don't start spontaneously. They originate from damage to the battery system: severe collisions that compromise the battery enclosure, manufacturing defects, water intrusion after flooding, or failures in charging infrastructure. These events can trigger internal short circuits and, in rare cases, thermal runaway — where heat spreads rapidly from one cell to its neighbors.

Gasoline vehicle fires follow a different pattern. They're overwhelmingly linked to fuel leaks, ruptured tanks, overheated engines, or electrical faults igniting flammable vapors. The presence of liquid fuel under pressure means ICE vehicles carry a continuous ignition risk, especially in older cars or high-impact crashes. The crucial distinction: EV fires are technically complex but infrequent. ICE fires are simpler but vastly more common.

Safety agencies acknowledge the challenges. The National Fire Protection Association and U.S. fire departments consistently note that EV fires pose unique problems for first responders — particularly in cooling battery packs and preventing re-ignition. At the same time, they emphasize that EVs account for only a small fraction of vehicle fires overall. A 2023 investigation by Battelle for the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration concluded that the propensity and severity of fires involving lithium-ion batteries are comparable to, or slightly lower than, those associated with gasoline and diesel fuels. European transport safety bodies and independent researchers studying post-crash fire behavior have reached the same conclusion.

Electric vehicles are not fireproof. No credible expert claims they are. But the widespread belief that they catch fire more often than gasoline cars isn't supported by modern data. Across multiple regions and datasets, EVs burn less frequently — sometimes by an order of magnitude or more. The myth persists because EV fires are visually striking and unfamiliar, not because they're common. As EV adoption continues to grow globally, the real-world evidence will only become clearer.