25 fires per 100,000 vehicles. That’s the electric vehicle fire rate identified in a widely cited analysis of federal data, compared to roughly 1,500 fires per 100,000 for gasoline vehicles and nearly 3,500 per 100,000 for hybrids — meaning gas cars catch fire at something like 60 times the rate of EVs on a per-vehicle basis. The irony is that when an EV does catch fire, it can take firefighters many times longer and far more water to put it out than a comparable gasoline fire, and federal investigators have already flagged that gap as a serious safety problem in its own right.
The Frequency Numbers Favor EVs by a Wide Margin
The most detailed public breakdown comes from an AutoinsuranceEZ analysis built on data from the National Transportation Safety Board, the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, and Recalls.gov. Normalized per 100,000 vehicles on the road, the study found roughly 25 fires for EVs, roughly 1,500 for gasoline vehicles, and nearly 3,500 for hybrids — the highest rate of the three categories, likely reflecting the fact that hybrids combine a combustion fuel system with a battery pack. In raw counts, that worked out to about 52 EV fires against roughly 200,000 gasoline vehicle fires and 16,000 hybrid fires, with the enormous gap in fleet size driving most of the difference in the per-vehicle rate.
Insurance data tells a similar, if less dramatic, story. The Highway Loss Data Institute has found EV insurance fire claims running at 0.19 per 1,000 insured vehicle years, versus 0.20 for gasoline vehicles — a smaller gap than the federal-data comparison, but still showing EVs at or below combustion vehicles on frequency. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has separately noted it has not experienced a single fire during EV crash testing since it began that testing in 2011, though that reflects controlled testing conditions rather than the full range of real-world causes like collisions, manufacturing defects, or charging equipment failures.
When an EV Does Burn, It Burns Differently
The physics of a lithium-ion battery fire is where the story changes. Once a battery pack goes into thermal runaway, individual cells feed heat into their neighbors in a chain reaction that can reignite hours or even days after firefighters believe a fire is out — a phenomenon virtually unknown with a burning fuel tank, which either burns out or is fully extinguished. The National Transportation Safety Board flagged this exact problem after a 2021 investigation, concluding that high-voltage EV battery fires “pose risks to first responders” and that manufacturer emergency-response guidance at the time was inadequate. The NTSB’s recommendations pushed for vehicle-specific firefighting guides and clearer protocols for storing a damaged battery afterward, though the agency itself has no enforcement power beyond issuing recommendations.
The scale of what it can take to fully extinguish a large-format battery fire became public in dramatic fashion when a Tesla Semi caught fire on a Northern California freeway. According to NTSB’s own account of the incident, firefighters used approximately 50,000 gallons of water to put the fire out, an aircraft dropped fire retardant on the surrounding area as a precaution, and the freeway stayed closed for roughly 15 hours while crews waited for the battery to cool enough to be safely moved. The battery itself reached temperatures around 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit while burning — heat that a standard structure fire or vehicle fire rarely approaches, and heat that keeps reigniting cells even after visible flames appear to be out.
Two Numbers, One Real Tradeoff
Both facts are true at once, and neither cancels the other out. An EV is measurably less likely to catch fire than a gasoline car carrying the same mileage and age, whether the comparison comes from federal recall and safety data or from insurance industry claims records. But the rare EV fire that does happen asks more of the people fighting it — more water, more specialized training, more time, and more caution around a battery that can reignite well after a scene looks safe. That’s why fire departments across the country have spent the past few years rewriting their own response protocols specifically for EVs, even as the underlying statistics say those vehicles are, on balance, the safer bet to be driving.