It is not surprising that by far the largest number of vehicle fires, at around 199,500 cases, occurs with combustion engines. After all, with a good 13 million units, they account for 95 percent of all cars sold.
For every 100,000 new registrations, there were around 1,530 vehicle fires in this category. This is a significantly better value than, for example, for hybrids: after all, almost 3,500 per 100,000 new cars in this class fell victim to a vehicle fire last year. The fire risk of hybrids is therefore more than double that of classic combustion engines.
However, electric vehicles have by far the lowest risk of fire – in absolute terms, but above all in relative terms. They accounted for around 1.5 percent of all new car sales in the USA in 2021. For every 100,000 new electric cars, just 25 vehicles caught fire nationwide over the course of the year.