[api]

Gas cars spontaneously igniting are rare, but flammable liquids like solvents or gasoline for lawn equipment catching fire and causing massive destruction is fairly common. People often do things like store solvents in basements where fumes can get loose and get near furnaces and other equipment and ignite.

Stored energy is stored energy.

You do have a bit of a point about large lithium power bricks. I trust those things less than I trust an EV, especially if they are the weird ChinaCorp off brand type from Amazon.

[Qwertious]

>Stored energy is stored energy.

There's plenty of stored energy in a slab of solid steel, but that doesn't make it remotely dangerous. What makes lithium-batteries dangerous is the thermal runaway, enabled by the liquid capacitor.

[api]

We got pretty good at making it acceptably safe to drive around at 80mph with tanks of volatile liquid fuel right behind or under us. We’ll get good at this too. Lithium batteries are already surprisingly safe for what they are.

[belltaco]

> There's plenty of stored energy in a slab of solid steel

Source? Are you confusing energy expended to make steel with energy being stored in it?