Perceived and Actual Fire Safety – Case of Hybrid and Electric Vehicle Fires in Finland 2015–2023

Abstract

As an emerging technology, hybrid and electric vehicles draw media attention and so does their fire safety. For this article, Finnish national rescue task database (Pronto) was reviewed for electric and hybrid vehicle fires for years 2015–2023, and the 44 records found were analyzed for the fire behavior and the successfulness of the rescue operation. Hybrid and electric vehicle fires are both absolutely and relatively rare compared to conventional vehicle fires. The incident rate for plug-in vehicles has been 0.2–0.9 per 10000 vehicles per year in the 2020s, which is significantly smaller than the rate for all passenger vehicles (4.6). Small absolute number is due to the small total number of hybrid and electric vehicles. Small relative number of fires may be due to the age of vehicles. Electrified vehicles can catch fire while plugged in, parked or while driving, with no significant differences in the incidence of the state of the vehicle. In road accidents, only one vehicle caught fire after a crash. All electric vehicle fires, even if the lithium-ion traction battery is involved, successfully extinguished with a branch pipe and traditional firefighting gear, as the rescue staff had been trained for handling incidents involving electric vehicles. There exists a media bias in reporting battery electric vehicle fires: of all 5 fires of BEV origin found, 4 have been reported in the media as an electric vehicle fire.