Government guidelines suggest electric vehicles with damaged batteries should be “quarantined” from other cars due to the risk of battery fires, which are typically harder to put out than fires in petrol or diesel cars.
The London Fire Brigade has warned that fires involving lithium batteries are the fastest-growing fire risk in London, after it was called out to 87 e-bike and 29 e-scooter fires in 2022.
Paris’s transport operator withdrew 149 electric buses from operation last year after two ignited on separate occasions.
The website Tesla-Fire.com lists 25 reports of Teslas catching fire globally since the beginning of 2023.
Thatcham Research said insurers would need to spend an additional £900m a year on quarantine facilities for damaged cars as a result of the safety measures by 2035, as more battery-powered vehicles take to the roads, with the changes forecast to add £20 a year onto all car insurance premiums.
Conservative MP Greg Smith, who sits on the Commons transport committee, said: “[The lack of battery diagnostics] is yet another reason why electric vehicles aren’t remotely suitable for the mass market yet and why we should be looking to other technologies, like synthetic fuels and hydrogen, that will be more reliable and friendly to the planet.”
Based in New York, Stephen Freeman is a Senior Editor at Trending Insurance News. Previously he has worked for Forbes and The Huffington Post. Steven is a graduate of Risk Management at the University of New York.