I think if Tesla could give a reason for the fires, rather than simply pointing out how rare they are, these stories would be much less compelling. It's the sense of the unknown which makes people paranoid. I suspect it has to do with Model S battery chemistry and they don't want to make the S even less competitive against the 3 than it already is.
The comparison with ICE cars should be to cars of a similar age.
Comparing them to the entire population of ICE cars, some of which would be old and poorly maintained, seems wrong
The only other thing would be an electric component overheating or shorting, but that would cause a small explosion rather than a continuous fire.
Li-ion battery fires are commonly fought with water.
The case we primarily discussed was an EV fire on the car deck of a ro-ro ferry.
And the conclusion from the paper is important:
"Using water mist resulted in a temporarily increased production rate of HF but the application of water mist had no significant effect on the total amount of released HF."
Essentially, our conclusion was don't touch it, if you have to then cool flammable things in the vicinity and as a last resort if things are about to spiral out of control put water on it.
At least in EU, cars with a compressed fuel tank (hydrogen, GPL or methane) cannot be parked in a closed or underground parking lot for one safety reason: risk of explosion. The risk is pretty low, and if you have such a tank you're also subjected to scheduled regular inspections and replacement of the tank, but you still cannot park underground. Not many people are aware or respect this limit, thanks to the fact that it's not easy to distinguish a car which has a dual fuel option.
Now imagine a lithium fire in a garage (maybe... your garage?).
Much less scary than gas leaking, filling part of a large underground parking garage, then getting ignited and collapsing the entire multi-story residential building built on top of the garage.
Also, while looking for examples, I learned that compressed gas (hydrogen, methane) is much less of a problem due to being lighter than air, so it doesn't accumulate as much, which means these cars are sometimes allowed. LPG, being heavier, sticks around near the ground also posing a suffocation risk.
I wonder how many of those ICE cars were new, or at least within the same life time of Tesla?
If we are talking about good old 20 years classic, then we all expect them to fail some day right? Or exotic cars that were be pushed to the limits and caught fire. ( From a few Lamborghini )
It is extremely rare ( if at all ), that a well maintained, newer ICE cars goes into flame just by filling up with petrol.