Electrifying an apartment building rarely happens by committee decision — it happens one resident at a time, as owners install chargers in their allocated bays. The result is a slow accumulation of lithium-ion energy in exactly the kind of space that makes a fire hardest to manage: enclosed, poorly ventilated, and shared.

Why the location changes everything

EV battery fires are rare. The Australian-based research group EV FireSafe, funded by the Department of Defence, has tracked only around 500 light-duty EV battery fires worldwide between 2010 and mid-2024, against tens of millions of vehicles on the road (ICCT, 2024). But when a traction battery does enter thermal runaway, the fire is stubborn. Australia’s national vehicle-emissions body notes that these fires take more time, more water and more firefighters to control than an equivalent petrol or diesel fire, and can reignite from stored energy in unburnt cells (NVESR, 2025).

Put that fire in an underground car park and the picture sharpens: heat and toxic smoke are trapped, sprinklers designed for ordinary vehicle fires may be overwhelmed, and the single ramp that residents park down is also the only escape route.

What an owners corporation should be doing

• Know where the chargers are. You cannot manage a risk you haven’t mapped. Keep a register of every charging point, its circuit, and the bay it serves.
• Write EV charging into the building’s fire and emergency plan. Include isolation points, who to call, and the fact that occupants should evacuate rather than fight a developed car fire.
• Specify equipment for the actual failure mode. Standard powder and CO₂ units knock down flame without cooling the pack, which is why the fire returns. A heavy-duty EV car fire blanket can contain a burning vehicle and limit spread to adjacent bays while crews respond; a 9L extinguisher suited to lithium-ion chemistry supports early intervention on smaller ignitions.
• Position equipment sensibly — near the car park entry and exit points, clearly signed, and known to the building manager.

The buildings that handle this well aren’t the ones that banned charging — that rarely holds. They’re the ones that treated the first charger as the trigger to update the plan. Explore vehicle-scale equipment in our electric car collection, or start with our strata & body corporate page.