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Between 2006 and 1010, an average of 152,280 passenger cars caught fire per year, causing an average of 209 deaths and $538m in damages. https://www.nfpa.org/-

Between 2006 and 1010, an average of 152,280 passenger cars caught fire per year, causing an average of 209 deaths and $538m in damages. https://www.nfpa.org/-/media/Files/News-and-Research/Fire-statistics-and-reports/US-Fire-Problem/ostypeofvehicle.ashx https://www.nfpa.org/-/media/Files/News-and-Research/Fire-st...

yumraj 7y ago
How many of those were sitting in a garage or just parked, doing nothing, when they caught fire?
- sooper 7y ago
  A not insubstantial amount, I'd predict. (Anecdata) I had to prove that the work I did on a car (replacing the bumper) didn't cause a fire which burned down the garage and house it was in a week later. That said, I do agree with your point that a brand new vehicle should not have these sorts of issues. Be interesting to see where the cause lay.
  - mikeash 7y ago
    I'm not sure about brand new vehicles. Cars have a bathtub curve like anything else. I expect car fires are mostly very old or very new cars.
  - madengr 7y ago
    The burden of proof ought to be the opposite.
  - hnburnsy 7y ago
    Just wondering but would insurance cover you in either case?
- smnrchrds 7y ago
  And how many of those explode with enough force to send a garage door flying?
  - JshWright 7y ago
    Large explosions from gasoline powered cars are indeed rare, but it's not uncommon for car fires to result in a number of smaller explosions that can be just as deadly, as pneumatic cylinders that operate a lot of hood and tailgate supports cook off an launch the rod inside out like a projectile. Another fun failure mode of gas cars is that when the gas tank does finally fail, if the car is on any sort of a slope, you now have a stream of flaming gasoline to worry about...
    - olliej 7y ago
      I mean you need to compare that to a lithium fire which is its own kind of awful to deal with. The reality is that current lithium batteries do have a very energetic failure mode - it’s not particularly common (because they’re engineered in such a way that a battery failure doesn’t trigger a fault in the casing) but when it does happen the immediate explosive force is much greater than for a gas tank. Also because physics lithium batteries do have a greater potential to simply “go wrong” when not in active use. That said it is obvious electric cars are the future - I just hope we can do better than the current battery tech, the power density is way down on gasoline and that means the batteries are huge, and therefore weigh enough to impact overall car efficiency.
      - JshWright 7y ago
        Sure, my point is just that gasoline isn't all sunshine and rainbows. Large energy capacity batteries, and lithium specifically, definitely pose some new and "interesting" challenges. I'm optimistic though. Gas tanks are as safe as they are today because of several decades of safety-focused engineering and iteration. If you gave me a choice between an ICE or an EV fire, I'm absolutely going to choose the gasoline, but that's just because it's a very mature technology, with well understood practices for dealing with them. I'd be surprised if I have the same answer in 10 years time though.
- yason 7y ago
  This is a very real threat albeit generally rare, of course. As long as an electrical circuit has power it can begin to heat up wires or connectors due to bad contacts or worn threads, for example, even if the car is cold and has been sitting for days. In the lucky case there's a slow short that just drains the battery or burns out the wiring, stopping the generation of more heat. In the worst case the heat will melt something and provide a new, direct short to ground, which runs enough power through the wires to ignite something. I have a garage for doing repairs and maintenance on my cars. Each time I park one of my vehicles (new or old) there I'll disconnect the battery negative cable and keep it disconnected unless I have to start the engine or connect to diagnostics. I have insurance, of course, but the idea of my shop burning down alone is enough of a deterrent that motivates me to do the small effort of disconnecting the battery. I really don't want to rebuild my shop and reacquire all my equipment because of a bad connector hidden inside the wiring harness somewhere in my car chose to fail.
eigen 7y ago
How many of those were the latest model year, purchased less than 6 months prior?
- MertsA 7y ago
  The 2010-ish model Jeeps had a habit of doing exactly that. Here's a video showing a bunch of similar catastrophic fires in Jeep Wranglers occurring without any sort of collision. And of course Chrysler's special investigators almost always just hand waved away the defects as not their problem and not a defect with the vehicle. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyEaC9xcYhE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyEaC9xcYhE Vehicle fires unrelated to a crash are not unheard of for traditional gas powered cars.
bgentry 7y ago
I do believe the media tends to make too big a deal of EV fires and issues (given how they compare to gas cars' frequent issues). That being said, I don't think the stats you shared are at all relevant here: those stats are probably almost all from accidents and maintenance issues on the road involving moving/operational vehicles. The explosion in this story was from a stationary vehicle parked in a garage, allegedly not even charging. There are probably some rare cases of this happening on gas vehicles over the years, but I expect any such case would also be concerning and deserving of a deep investigation.
- teleclimber 7y ago
  BMW seems to have such an issue with its gas cars. Or at least evidence indicates this is a possibility: https://abcnews.go.com/Business/bmw-mystery-fires-abc-news-investigation/story?id=47335778 https://abcnews.go.com/Business/bmw-mystery-fires-abc-news-i...
  - tastroder 7y ago
    Quite a few manufacturers had similar streaks over the last few decades that usually ended in changes to the car line in question, another example to yours is [1]. Not sure why we treat this differently (either by exaggerating or ignoring cases where an EV is involved). It's certainly a thing that happens in these systems, sometimes it happens enough to warrant changes and/or recalls if it's systemic. Should there be insufficient protection in EV models that fails to address the safety issues unique to the new components that's something we need to address, just like we address when it happens in traditional cars. Media over-reporting this is no different than those "look at that expensive supercar on fire" cases imho, the tech is new and gets clicks, slap Tesla in the summary and you get even more clicks. We certainly don't help the issue with discussions that look like programming language wars. [1] https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/ferrari-fuel-vapor-leak-fire-recall/ https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/ferrari-fuel-vapor-leak-f... *Edit: changed to real link from amp version.
- ianai 7y ago
  Happened with an ICE to a neighbor house this past week.
dmix 7y ago
I guess a gas-filled vehicle is just as capable of blowing the roofs off a garage too.
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  If you park it in an unventilated space like that and then leak gasoline all over the place to evaporate until it reaches an ignition source? Yeah. https://www.gainesville.com/article/LK/20090702/News/604153155/GS/ https://www.gainesville.com/article/LK/20090702/News/6041531... https://www.firehouse.com/home/news/10515159/one-killed-in-connecticut-garage-explosion https://www.firehouse.com/home/news/10515159/one-killed-in-c...
ryanmercer 7y ago
I wonder how many of those were caused by animals though, shorting out wires or creating nests in areas that then catch fire.
RaceWon 7y ago
> Between 2006 and 1010, an average of 152,280 passenger cars caught fire IIRC 300 people a year are killed by car fires in the States while self-filling gas cars due to static electric sparks from their clothing, and/ or shoes off the cars carpeting. Nasty that, huh?

yumraj 7y ago

How many of those were sitting in a garage or just parked, doing nothing, when they caught fire?

sooper 7y ago
A not insubstantial amount, I'd predict. (Anecdata) I had to prove that the work I did on a car (replacing the bumper) didn't cause a fire which burned down the garage and house it was in a week later. That said, I do agree with your point that a brand new vehicle should not have these sorts of issues. Be interesting to see where the cause lay.
- mikeash 7y ago
  I'm not sure about brand new vehicles. Cars have a bathtub curve like anything else. I expect car fires are mostly very old or very new cars.
- madengr 7y ago
  The burden of proof ought to be the opposite.
- hnburnsy 7y ago
  Just wondering but would insurance cover you in either case?
smnrchrds 7y ago
And how many of those explode with enough force to send a garage door flying?
- JshWright 7y ago
  Large explosions from gasoline powered cars are indeed rare, but it's not uncommon for car fires to result in a number of smaller explosions that can be just as deadly, as pneumatic cylinders that operate a lot of hood and tailgate supports cook off an launch the rod inside out like a projectile. Another fun failure mode of gas cars is that when the gas tank does finally fail, if the car is on any sort of a slope, you now have a stream of flaming gasoline to worry about...
  - olliej 7y ago
    I mean you need to compare that to a lithium fire which is its own kind of awful to deal with. The reality is that current lithium batteries do have a very energetic failure mode - it’s not particularly common (because they’re engineered in such a way that a battery failure doesn’t trigger a fault in the casing) but when it does happen the immediate explosive force is much greater than for a gas tank. Also because physics lithium batteries do have a greater potential to simply “go wrong” when not in active use. That said it is obvious electric cars are the future - I just hope we can do better than the current battery tech, the power density is way down on gasoline and that means the batteries are huge, and therefore weigh enough to impact overall car efficiency.
    - JshWright 7y ago
      Sure, my point is just that gasoline isn't all sunshine and rainbows. Large energy capacity batteries, and lithium specifically, definitely pose some new and "interesting" challenges. I'm optimistic though. Gas tanks are as safe as they are today because of several decades of safety-focused engineering and iteration. If you gave me a choice between an ICE or an EV fire, I'm absolutely going to choose the gasoline, but that's just because it's a very mature technology, with well understood practices for dealing with them. I'd be surprised if I have the same answer in 10 years time though.
yason 7y ago
This is a very real threat albeit generally rare, of course. As long as an electrical circuit has power it can begin to heat up wires or connectors due to bad contacts or worn threads, for example, even if the car is cold and has been sitting for days. In the lucky case there's a slow short that just drains the battery or burns out the wiring, stopping the generation of more heat. In the worst case the heat will melt something and provide a new, direct short to ground, which runs enough power through the wires to ignite something. I have a garage for doing repairs and maintenance on my cars. Each time I park one of my vehicles (new or old) there I'll disconnect the battery negative cable and keep it disconnected unless I have to start the engine or connect to diagnostics. I have insurance, of course, but the idea of my shop burning down alone is enough of a deterrent that motivates me to do the small effort of disconnecting the battery. I really don't want to rebuild my shop and reacquire all my equipment because of a bad connector hidden inside the wiring harness somewhere in my car chose to fail.

eigen 7y ago

How many of those were the latest model year, purchased less than 6 months prior?

MertsA 7y ago
The 2010-ish model Jeeps had a habit of doing exactly that. Here's a video showing a bunch of similar catastrophic fires in Jeep Wranglers occurring without any sort of collision. And of course Chrysler's special investigators almost always just hand waved away the defects as not their problem and not a defect with the vehicle. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyEaC9xcYhE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyEaC9xcYhE Vehicle fires unrelated to a crash are not unheard of for traditional gas powered cars.

bgentry 7y ago

I do believe the media tends to make too big a deal of EV fires and issues (given how they compare to gas cars' frequent issues). That being said, I don't think the stats you shared are at all relevant here: those stats are probably almost all from accidents and maintenance issues on the road involving moving/operational vehicles. The explosion in this story was from a stationary vehicle parked in a garage, allegedly not even charging. There are probably some rare cases of this happening on gas vehicles over the years, but I expect any such case would also be concerning and deserving of a deep investigation.

teleclimber 7y ago
BMW seems to have such an issue with its gas cars. Or at least evidence indicates this is a possibility: https://abcnews.go.com/Business/bmw-mystery-fires-abc-news-investigation/story?id=47335778 https://abcnews.go.com/Business/bmw-mystery-fires-abc-news-i...
- tastroder 7y ago
  Quite a few manufacturers had similar streaks over the last few decades that usually ended in changes to the car line in question, another example to yours is [1]. Not sure why we treat this differently (either by exaggerating or ignoring cases where an EV is involved). It's certainly a thing that happens in these systems, sometimes it happens enough to warrant changes and/or recalls if it's systemic. Should there be insufficient protection in EV models that fails to address the safety issues unique to the new components that's something we need to address, just like we address when it happens in traditional cars. Media over-reporting this is no different than those "look at that expensive supercar on fire" cases imho, the tech is new and gets clicks, slap Tesla in the summary and you get even more clicks. We certainly don't help the issue with discussions that look like programming language wars. [1] https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/ferrari-fuel-vapor-leak-fire-recall/ https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/ferrari-fuel-vapor-leak-f... *Edit: changed to real link from amp version.
ianai 7y ago
Happened with an ICE to a neighbor house this past week.

dmix 7y ago

I guess a gas-filled vehicle is just as capable of blowing the roofs off a garage too.

AnthonyMouse 7y ago
If you park it in an unventilated space like that and then leak gasoline all over the place to evaporate until it reaches an ignition source? Yeah. https://www.gainesville.com/article/LK/20090702/News/604153155/GS/ https://www.gainesville.com/article/LK/20090702/News/6041531... https://www.firehouse.com/home/news/10515159/one-killed-in-connecticut-garage-explosion https://www.firehouse.com/home/news/10515159/one-killed-in-c...

ryanmercer 7y ago

I wonder how many of those were caused by animals though, shorting out wires or creating nests in areas that then catch fire.

RaceWon 7y ago

> Between 2006 and 1010, an average of 152,280 passenger cars caught fire IIRC 300 people a year are killed by car fires in the States while self-filling gas cars due to static electric sparks from their clothing, and/ or shoes off the cars carpeting. Nasty that, huh?