The report, published in July, goes on to detail how water used to put out burning electric cars is contaminated by toxic chemicals in lithium-ion batteries and can pose a “significant ecological impact” in some areas.
It suggested that in these locations that water used to tackle blazes would need to be contained and treated at a plant before being released into sewage.
On top of this, it warned that around 13pc of electric vehicle fires reignite, sometimes hours later and multiple times, adding the fires were harder to extinguish than those of petrol or diesel cars.
Another risk identified by the report is flammable vapour clouds emitted by batteries during a chemical reaction known as “thermal runaway”, when a battery overheats, which are said to potentially result in flash fires, explosions and flaming jets.
While petrol and diesel vehicle fires typically took five minutes to extinguish, electric vehicle fires can take as much as 49 minutes to put out, it said.
It referred to examples trialled in China where burning electric vehicles had been put out by being submerged in external tanks and constructing mobile baths around electric cars to flood their batteries.
It said that battery-powered cars did “not present an increased likelihood of fire” when compared to conventional fuel cars based on current data, but acknowledged that “as electric vehicles age and become more widely used [the] risk of fire may increase.”
The report included responses from the National Fire Chief’s Council (NFCC), which advised of additional risks to firefighters due to potentially limited access to a burning vehicle in a car park.
While the NFCC was said to be reviewing its approach to putting out electric car fires, new equipment to tackle electric blazes is still developing and “limited” in the UK, according to the report.