How common are those fires? I stopped a lady driving g a smoking Chevrolet Volt yesterday, it was coming out the wheel well and definitely smelled of electronic.
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Electric vehicles are less likely to catch fire than combustion engine vehicles, by far. EV fires are harder to extinguish however.
EV fires are super rare. The overwhelming majority of vehicle fires are from flammability’s original BFF, cars with oil and gas sloshing around.
https://www.motortrend.com/features/you-are-wrong-about-ev-fires/
The problem with EV fires isn’t their frequency. The problem is that, in the handful of times they happen, they’re a pain in the ass to put out.
Not common enough where anytime one happens it's still newsworthy. We'll see if that continues as the percentage of BEVs on the road grows
Brakes, clutches, and electronics all smell pretty similar when burning. The breaking period on the Ford Fiesta/Focus with the ~2014 dct auto seriously smelled like an electronics fire. Not saying that Volt wasn't having an electrical fire, just trying to spread awareness that there is significant overlap in the smells. I'm not sure where the high voltage electronics/motor are on the Volt.