Are lithium battreries a fire hazard?
From the viewpoint of fire safety, a car equipped with lithium batteries is one class better that a vehicle using petrol, diesel or ethanol fuel, and two classes better than a vehicle using natural gas or a hydrogen-powered fuel cell. There have been cases in which the lithium batteries in mobile phones have begun to burn. The frequency of this occurrence is only 0.00002%. Billions of lithium batteries have been manufactured and only a few hundred cases of fires have been reported in the whole of the technology’s history. The majority of these events have resulted from incorrect packaging or handling. For example, the metal forks of a fork-lift truck penetrated a packaging case leading to short circuits and ignition of the packing material. There is no risk of a major fire or explosion.
