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Comment by thebruce87m | Hacker News Reader

> No no no, you can't compare the ICE risk. an ICE car sitting in my garage has basically zero chance of catching fire and burning my house down while my family sleeps.

Wrong. Really easy to find lots of examples, here’s a couple to get you started.

https://www.carpro.com/blog/weekly-recalls-lincoln-park-outs...

> The risk of fire exists even when the vehicle is parked and turned off. This month, the company will notify affected owners of the fire risk, advising them to park outside until they can have their vehicles fixed.

https://eu.delawareonline.com/story/news/local/2024/02/19/nh...

> Water may enter the starter solenoid and cause an electrical short which can result in an engine fire while the car is parked or driving, according to the NHTSA.

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Wow. Well, I'll take the correction. I've never heard of anything like that. However, while this is also scary, I still think its unfair to say the evidence of a potential problem type in a new technology like EVs is not concerning, and to say that the likelihood of fire is greater in ICE (because I don't think its fair to add in the comparison of fire risk while turned on to that of fire risk when turned off)

At this point all we know is that EVs catch fire much less than ICE vehicles:

https://thedriven.io/2023/05/16/petrol-and-diesel-cars-20-ti...

> Only 23 fires were reported in electric vehicles in 2022 making up just 0.004% of Sweden’s fleet of 611,000 EVs.

> In contrast, over the same period, some 3,400 fires we reported in 2022 from Sweden’s 4.4 million petrol and diesel cars representing 0.08% of the fossil car fleet.

> This means that in 2022 a petrol or diesel car in Sweden was around 20 times more likely to catch fire than an electric vehicle.

> Furthermore, fires in electric cars are declining. The MSB says the number of fires in electric cars has been around 20 a year over the last three years, although the number of electric cars over that tie has almost doubled. Presumably, this is due to EV makers improving fire suppressing designs in newer models.

I’ve not seen any stats about parked vs driving. Given that ICE car fires are exceedingly rare it’s probably worth worrying about other things.

EVs are unknown and thus scary. They're the nuclear power plants of the vehicle industry.

The media also makes a big headline every time a Tesla catches fire in Finland, Minnesota and the thousands of ICE vehicles on fire don't warrant even a minor note.

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