The major issue in these fires is the lack of someone attentive. We can leverage the existing horn in the same way as anti-theft systems to fix that. We need

The major issue in these fires is the lack of someone attentive. We can leverage the existing horn in the same way as anti-theft systems to fix that. We need a way to detect the issue, but I would hope there's a thermometer somewhere we can use to sense dangerous thermals. Even more interestingly, the car could communicate with your smoke detectors to set off the fire alarm. It would be a great value proposition for something like Nest. It can let you know that there's going to be a fire before it even starts. I would hope that honking the horn in case of fire is something we could achieve with a software update, but maybe not. The pipe dream would be for the car to be able to get itself somewhere safe-ish in bad conditions. We're probably a good ways off from it, and safer batteries may take over first, but worst case scenario we may be able to program some kind of "escape path" into the cars. My car has the ability to save garage door opener codes. It's not too far fetched to be able to tell it to roll up the garage door and pull out into the driveway in case of potential fire situations. You might need an automatic ejector for the charger cable, but that doesn't seem insurmountable either. I do agree that electric cars are more dangerous for now, and will continue to be even after the updates. We can narrow that gap with software, and even more with some integrated hardware. It's not all doom and gloom for EVs, though.