A major new study from UL Research Institutes' Fire Safety Research Institute cuts through years of fear-driven headlines about electric vehicle fires and replaces them with controlled-burn data. Released this week, the report — built on 18 full-scale EV fire experiments — finds that battery fires are a serious but manageable hazard, one that existing equipment and trained crews can handle without reinventing the firefighting playbook. According to the study, EV and gas-car fires tracked closely in fire growth rate, peak fire size, and overall fire duration. Much of the contamination traces back to the passenger compartment fire itself, but the battery adds a distinct chemical layer. Battery fires are serious.