The EV in Your Fleet Is Carrying a Fire Risk Your Accident Management Process Wasn’t Built For

INTELLIDENTS.ONLINE   |   FLEET RISK & TECHNOLOGY

By Peter Adams   |   Auto IntelliDents

Over the past twelve months, I’ve had more conversations with fleet managers, insurers, and repair operators about electric vehicles than in the previous five years combined. They’re not about range or charging. They’re about what happens after the accident — and they share a common thread: the processes and insurance arrangements most operators have in place were not designed with a lithium-ion battery pack in mind.

That gap is not theoretical. On 11 September 2023, Fire and Rescue NSW was called to a vehicle holding yard at Sydney Airport, where a damaged MG ZS EV battery pack — removed from the vehicle and left on the ground — had caught fire and destroyed five vehicles. The battery had reportedly been exposed to the elements for some time before it ignited. The incident was investigated by FRNSW’s Fire Investigation and Research Unit and its Safety of Alternative and Renewable Energy Technologies team. It is the clearest local illustration of what improper handling of a lithium-ion battery pack looks like in practice.

The intent of this article is to bring awareness of three land-based motor trade environments where that risk is most acute: vehicle storage facilities, collision repair workshops, and dismantlers’ yards. Each presents distinct challenges. All three are underestimating the exposure. (Fire and Rescue NSW, September 2023)

Why EV Fires Are Different

Fleet managers understand conventional vehicle fires. An ICE fire is serious but manageable: interrupt the fuel supply, apply suppressant, the fire goes out. That model underpins everything from storage compound layouts to repair shop emergency procedures.

A lithium-ion battery fire operates on different physics. When a cell enters thermal runaway — triggered by physical damage, charging fault, manufacturing defect, or heat — it becomes simultaneously fuel and oxidiser. It generates its own oxygen as it burns. Conventional suppression cannot extinguish it. Water can slow propagation, but fully managing a pack in runaway requires sustained high-volume application — typically 3,000 to 8,000 litres per hour — maintained for hours after the vehicle appears to have stopped burning.

A lithium-ion battery generates its own oxygen in thermal runaway. Cutting the external energy supply does not stop it.

Two characteristics define the post-accident exposure. First, latency: thermal runaway in a crash-damaged pack may not initiate for many hours after the physical event. Nelson, 2022 — when FENZ attended a Nissan Leaf whose battery had been punctured by a fence post in a collision — is a local example of impact-initiated battery compromise. Second, toxicity: a pack in runaway releases hydrogen fluoride, hydrogen cyanide, and carbon monoxide. FENZ’s national manager of response capability, Paul Turner, has noted that once an EV fire is suppressed, reignition risk can persist for up to five days. (NZ Herald, 2023; RNZ, 2019)

Storage Facilities: A Risk Profile That Has Changed

Vehicle storage compounds — operated by fleet managers, auction houses, accident management providers, or insurers holding salvage — have historically carried low fire risk ratings. Vehicles are static and not being refuelled. That history is embedded in the fire insurance pricing and physical arrangements of most compounds.

EVs change that profile materially. They introduce a self-sustaining ignition source independent of external conditions, and they make suppression in a multi-vehicle scenario substantially harder. A compound holding vehicles at standard spacing — 1.5 to 2 metres between rows — can see a single vehicle fire reach adjacent vehicles within minutes. If those vehicles are also EVs, or if radiant heat is sufficient to trigger neighbouring packs, the event escalates rapidly.

The Sydney Airport holding yard incident is instructive not because the battery spontaneously failed, but because of what preceded it: a damaged battery had been removed from the vehicle, stored on the ground in a non-specialist compound, and left without monitoring. The fire that followed destroyed five vehicles. Compound operators across NZ and Australia storing damaged or unknown-history EVs without quarantine protocols are exposed to exactly this sequence of events.

⚠  Incident: Sydney Airport Holding Yard — September 2023

A damaged MG ZS EV battery pack, removed from the vehicle and stored on the ground in a holding yard at Mascot, Sydney, ignited and destroyed five vehicles.

FRNSW Fire Investigation Unit confirmed lithium-ion thermal runaway as the cause.

MG Motor Australia confirmed the battery had been previously damaged and the vehicle was not in a driveable condition.

The battery had been exposed to the elements for an unknown period before ignition.

Key lesson: a removed battery pack retains the full fire hazard of a pack in situ. Storage without quarantine, monitoring, or controlled discharge is not storage — it is exposure.

Source: Fire and Rescue NSW; The Driven; CarExpert (September 2023)

For storage operators, the practical questions are:

• Do you know your EV proportion at any given time, and have you disclosed a material increase to your insurer?

• Do intake procedures capture battery condition and state of charge on arrival?

• Is there a quarantine zone for vehicles with unknown or damaged battery history?

• Has your emergency response plan been reviewed by your local fire service since EVs entered your inventory?

Collision Repair: The Damage You Can’t See

The collision repair environment sits at the intersection of two problems: physical trauma that may have compromised battery integrity, and a workflow designed for vehicles whose fire behaviour after a crash is well understood.

When a crash-damaged EV arrives at a repair facility, the repairer is dealing with an unknown. Battery damage from a collision may not be visible externally, may not register on a standard diagnostic check, and may not manifest for many hours. The window between vehicle arrival and a potential thermal runaway event can encompass intake assessment, photography, quoting, and parking in the main workshop area.

OEM guidance is consistent: crash-damaged EVs should be treated as battery hazard vehicles from the moment of arrival. High-voltage system isolated, vehicle not charged, stored in a quarantine area with minimum three-metre clearance, monitored for heat development for at least 24 hours. EV FireSafe, which is funded by the Australian Department of Defence to research EV battery fires, identifies workshop error as one of the top causes of thermal runaway in its global incident database — the same database it used to brief NZ emergency services during its September 2024 visit to Aotearoa. (EV FireSafe; The Driven, 2023; Drive Electric NZ, 2024)

Workshop error is one of the top causes of thermal runaway globally. The local incident record is beginning to reflect that.

The implementation gap is widest at independent operators who are not franchise-aligned with an EV manufacturer. Without OEM diagnostic tooling to read battery management system data, repairers rely on external indicators — visible deformation, warning lights, heat — that are unreliable as early indicators of internal compromise. A damaged pack placed on charge by a repairer trying to restore vehicle function is one of the higher-probability thermal runaway pathways in the repair environment.

The liability trajectory concerns me. A repairer who receives a crash-damaged EV, places it on charge without battery assessment, and stores it in an unsegregated workshop, then experiences a thermal runaway that damages third-party property, is in a materially different position to one who followed OEM protocols. That distinction will matter when insurers and courts examine the claims now beginning to emerge.

What OEM Guidance Requires of Repairers

High-voltage isolation before any work commences

No charging until battery integrity is assessed by an authorised technician

Quarantine storage — minimum 3-metre clearance from structures and other vehicles

Flatbed or EV-configured towing only — not conventional wheel-lift or dolly equipment

Minimum 24-hour heat monitoring post-arrival for crash-damaged vehicles

Ventilation of storage area; staff trained to recognise battery off-gas

Dismantlers’ Yards: The Sharpest Edge

Vehicle dismantlers receive vehicles with the most complex and least documented histories: collision, flood, extended storage, partial discharge, unknown electrical events. An EV entering a wrecking yard may have a battery pack that has been submerged, structurally compromised in a previous accident, or stored at an unsafe state of charge for months. The battery management system may be non-functional.

The Sydney Airport incident is directly relevant here. The MG ZS battery that ignited was a removed pack stored on the ground — the condition in which a dismantler’s removed battery awaiting recycling collection or resale routinely sits. The difference is that dismantlers may have multiple such packs, in a yard environment containing angle grinders, oxy-acetylene equipment, and other ignition sources.

Battery removal is where the risk concentrates. Cutting into a battery enclosure with dismantling tools introduces mechanical and thermal stress to cells that may already be compromised. Momentarily short-circuiting the high-voltage bus during removal — in a pack that has not been properly discharged — is a credible thermal runaway pathway. A single large EV pack carries 75 to 100 kWh of stored energy. A pallet of removed packs awaiting collection is a concentrated fire load that most dismantlers’ sites, designed for conventional vehicle hazards, are not equipped to manage.

The regulatory framework for end-of-life vehicle processing in NZ and Australia predates significant EV penetration. Authorised treatment requirements address fuel, oil, coolant, and refrigerant. Lithium-ion battery removal and stored pack management is not yet treated as a mandatory distinct hazard category. EV FireSafe has noted publicly that ‘bush mechanics’ approaches to EV battery work — removal without controlled discharge, handling without specialist equipment — carry risks that the industry has not yet fully internalised. (The Driven, September 2023)

The Insurance Signal

Across both markets, motor trades insurers are working through an underwriting problem they have not fully articulated publicly but are acting on in practice. Risk profiles have changed as EVs entered the vehicle parc; the information captured at underwriting has not always kept pace. In Australia, EV FireSafe data records 13 verified EV battery fires since 2021 (as of March 2026), with four further incidents under investigation. In New Zealand, FENZ data — obtained under the Official Information Act and analysed by Centrist — identified at least eight EV fire incidents over 2022–23, potentially representing 23 percent of all spontaneously combusting vehicles over that period. (NRMA Open Road, 2026; Centrist NZ, 2024)

A motor trades operator whose EV throughput has grown significantly without disclosure to their insurer may find that the policy as underwritten does not respond to the loss as it occurred. That is not a theoretical risk — it is the direction of travel in claims conversations I am aware of across the sector. Forward-looking underwriters are beginning to differentiate: enhanced covers with EV endorsements are available to operators who can demonstrate quarantine zones, high-voltage trained staff, and OEM-compliant handling. Those who cannot are increasingly encountering sub-limits or specific exclusions.

Connecting This to Fleet Strategy

For fleet managers, the implications extend beyond the three environments I’ve described. A fleet transitioning to EVs is acquiring a different post-accident workflow — one that touches towing protocols, repairer selection, storage arrangements for damaged vehicles, and the claims management processes around all of it.

The question of which repairers in a preferred supplier network are genuinely equipped to handle damaged EVs is not being asked consistently enough. OEM-aligned repairers with diagnostic tooling and trained staff are a subset of the broader repair network. For a fleet directing vehicles to non-aligned repairers, that is an exposure worth understanding before it becomes a claim.

This is not a counsel of paralysis. The operational challenges of managing EVs post-accident are solvable. But they require deliberate attention, updated protocols, supplier due diligence, and honest conversations with insurers about how the risk profile has changed. The fleets getting this right are approaching it as a managed transition. The ones that are not are accumulating exposure that neither their accident management process nor their insurance policy was built to absorb.

REFERENCES & SOURCES

Fire and Rescue NSW (FRNSW). (September 2023). “Five cars destroyed by fire after Lithium-ion battery ignites in parking lot — Sydney Airport.” fire.nsw.gov.au

The Driven. (September 2023). “Model 3 catches fire near Goulburn, as discarded MG battery destroys five cars at airport.” thedriven.io

CarExpert. (September 2023). “Electric car battery sparks Sydney Airport carpark blaze.” carexpert.com.au

NZ Herald. (September 2023). “Vehicle fires: What’s more dangerous — an EV or a petrol car?” (Includes Nelson Nissan Leaf and Pakuranga Heights incidents.) nzherald.co.nz

RNZ News. (2019). “Electric car fires: ‘There can be a risk of reignition for up to five days’.” — FENZ national manager of response capability Paul Turner. rnz.co.nz

Centrist NZ. (2024). “NZ Unprepared For EV Fire Risks: OIA Documents Reveal.” centrist.nz

EV FireSafe / Drive Electric NZ. (September 2024). EV Fire Safe New Zealand briefing pack — webinar supported by Meridian Energy and EECA. evfiresafe.com/evfs-nz

NRMA Open Road / MyNRMA. (Updated March 2026). “Understanding electric vehicle fires: A comprehensive guide.” (Cites EV FireSafe data: 13 verified Australian EV battery fires since 2021.) mynrma.com.au

Hassan, M.K. et al. (2023). “Fire Incidents, Trends, and Risk Mitigation Framework of Electrical Vehicle Cars in Australia.” Fire, vol. 6(8), p. 325. Western Sydney University. doi.org/10.3390/fire6080325

Fire and Rescue NSW / AFAC. (June 2024). “Electric Vehicles (EV) and EV charging equipment in the built environment” — FRNSW Fire Safety Position Statement. fire.nsw.gov.au

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Peter Adams is the principal of Auto IntelliDents (OnRequest (NZ) Limited), a specialist provider of AI-powered vehicle damage assessment and accident management services to fleet operators across New Zealand and Australia. Enquiries: intellidents.online

This article may be shared freely with attribution. © Auto IntelliDents / OnRequest (NZ) Limited.