EVs get the headlines. But this is where lithium-ion fires actually start

Every electric-car fire makes the news. It's dramatic, it photographs well, and it feeds an easy headline. But if you follow where fire services actually spend their time, a very different picture emerges, and it points away from the driveway and toward the bench, the hallway and the charging cable.

Electric vehicles are a small part of the lithium-ion fire story. As of April 2026 there were more than 500,000 electric vehicles on Australian roads, and Australia's national research group EV FireSafe had verified just 14 EV battery fires here since 2021 (Australian Government, 2026). Most of those weren't spontaneous failures at all; the verified Australian cases were traced to high-speed crashes, external fires and arson rather than a battery deciding to combust on its own. Across the wider data, petrol and diesel cars are estimated to be between 20 and 80 times more likely to catch fire than EVs (The Conversation, 2026).

So where are the fires?

The answer is the small stuff we all own. In its 2024-25 reporting, Fire and Rescue NSW attended hundreds of lithium-ion battery fires, and the top sources were e-mobility devices like e-bikes and e-scooters (111), small portable devices such as laptops (99) and battery chargers (31), not electric cars (National Roads and Motorists' Association [NRMA], n.d.). Fire and Rescue NSW is now recording lithium-ion fires at a rate of several a week, and the trend is still climbing (Fire and Rescue NSW [FRNSW], 2024).

Why the small batteries are the bigger risk

It seems backwards that a phone or an e-bike would be more dangerous than a car with a battery a hundred times larger. The difference is engineering. Electric cars use high-quality cells wrapped in sophisticated battery-management and cooling systems that keep them in a safe operating window while driving and charging. Many e-bikes, e-scooters, tools and cheap devices do not. Add an aftermarket charger, a damaged pack, or unattended overnight charging indoors, and you have the exact conditions behind most of those call-outs (The Conversation, 2026). When these smaller cells fail they still enter thermal runaway, releasing intense heat and toxic gas (Larsson et al., 2017), just in the middle of your home rather than out on the road.

What this means for how you protect your home

It changes where you should focus. For most households the priority isn't the car in the garage; it's the e-bike charging in the hallway, the power tools on the workshop bench, and the laptop or power bank left charging on the couch. Protecting those means putting simple measures where those batteries actually live.

• Charge them safely. Compliant chargers, hard non-combustible surfaces, and never unattended or overnight where you can't respond.
• Contain the risky ones. A fire-resistant containment bag gives e-bike, tool and device batteries a safer place to charge, store and travel.
• Be able to respond. A lithium-ion extinguisher and a fire blanket sized for e-bikes and e-scooters let you tackle and contain a small fire early.
• Know the warning signs. Swelling, heat, odd smells, hissing or smoke mean stop, isolate and, if it's smoking or hot, get clear and call 000.

None of this is a reason to fear electric vehicles; the data is clear that they're the least of the problem. It's a reason to take the everyday batteries more seriously. The headline risk and the real risk are not the same thing, and the sensible place to spend your attention is on the small batteries you charge every day.