True that, sort of - it's the electrolyte which is the greatest fire risk in a lithium-ion battery. But then again, neither is a petrol (or LPG, or even hydrogen) fireball an easy thing to deal with. Might be worth having a read through
this article, but here are a couple of excerpts -
Quote:
When batteries are used as intended, there’s only one fire for every 100 million lithium-ion battery cells out there, says Jeff Dahn, professor of physics and chemistry at Dalhousie University. Tesla also guards against thermal runaway events with an extensive liquid cooling system designed to cool the cells so fast that if one cell catches fire, its neighbors won’t.
(...)
Tesla further protects the battery pack with a quarter-inch-thick plate of hardened aluminum. In many cases, this seems to work. The Model S earned the highest safety ratings from NHTSA after crash tests. But the protection didn’t prove to be enough in the case of the (three) fires.
Tesla also built a firewall between the pack and the passenger compartment. “That firewall is designed so that even if the pack does go into thermal runaway, it does not penetrate the passenger compartment,” Musk says.
|
Here's
another article which starts off with a rather pertinent quote:
"A battery-powered vehicle having a fire incident is newsworthy. A gasoline-powered vehicle having a fire is newsworthy only if it stops traffic."
In short, if this is something that genuinely concerns you then you should never get on a aeroplane again, as the fire risk from all those phone and laptop batteries they allow on is greater, less preventable and potentially more catastrophic than any EV fire.