@drsimevans This looks like any American corporate news story. It's your sign to unsubscribe.

@drsimevans Also, 131 to 232 fires *in three years* time (increase of 21% per year). While number of EVs seems to be 664k to 1.3m in one year.

@drsimevans The headline could have been that EV fires are not growing at the same rate as EV ownership. That indicates improvement. But the “tiny fraction of vehicle fires” is a meaningless number without real numbers. Because if EVs are 1% of cars and 1% of fires, then it doesn’t mean anything at all. But if EVs are 6% of cars and 1% of fires that makes them seem safer (to my lay persons math).

Wow. Suggested better headline: Number of incidents with thing scale with number of thing.

@drsimevans
What goes through the minds of journalists who write misinformation like this? They must know it's wrong so is it just a desperate need for a job, for money? Or do they have some sort of ideological commitment to the cause of right wing, anti-environmental politics? Are they lying for cash or the cause?

@drsimevans and let us not forget, as each new generation of battery technology is rolled out, battery fires become increasingly less likely. Add to that the simple fact that petrol is a highly flammable liquid (diesel less so but it still burns under the correct conditions) and the first generation of solid state batteries are an order of magnitude safer than current batteries, and it becomes evident not only how much safer EVs are and will continue to become over internal combustion cars, but also how extremely alarmist this article is!

@drsimevans Also, they point out the (somewhat-valid) concerns about lithium-ion fires but skip over how many electric vehicle fires are actually battery fires and how many are confined to the motor compartment or the vehicle interior, or whatever.

@drsimevans I read the headline before the rest of the post and thought it was going to be about Tesla cars