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Don't insurance companies have highly trained and highly paid actuaries? My understanding is they look at numbers, not headlines. I'm sure there is some sort of professional ethical standard they are expected to uphold.

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You aren't looking at the whole picture. In fault states, the insurance company would have to pay out to the other party in the case of an accident. That money needs to come from somewhere, namely the premiums, which is why they go up after there is reason to believe it could happen again. This isn't about emotions or ethics but rather cold logic

Yeah, but I find it hard to believe they hadn't already included some amount of fire probability in their calculations. Isn't it possible their assumed probability is higher than the actual, since it was perhaps based on the track record of internal combustion cars? I'm out of my depth here. IANAAA - not an actuarial analyst, nor an automotive engineer.

It's about future likelihood, not prior probability, and the fact that an issue was discovered means that the likelihood is much higher than if it were some isolated incidents.

To put it differently, if it were entirely random, the premiums would not change, but if there were a systemic problem (which appears to be the case here) the premiums should change to reflect the risk

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