That statistic may be true, but it sounds like it needs to be clarified.
One thing I would ask about is just how big the fire events were. Perhaps I am wrong, but when a gas or diesel vehicle catches fire, it can be easily extinguished. I had a fire in my gas powered truck on a highway trip and was able to put it out with the small fire extinguisher that I carried. I even had time to pull over to the shoulder of the road, get out of the truck, open the hood, observe the fire, go into the trailer to get the extinguisher, return to the truck, and put the fire out. I did this myself, with a small extinguisher. And after it cooled down, I was able to drive the truck and trailer to the next exit where repairs were made.
But, from what I have heard, it is very difficult to extinguish fires in lithium batteries. They resist conventional fire fighting methods and, as apparently happened in this truck, the fire spreads from one cell to the next and the next and the next, etc. until all or most of the cells have burned up. I don't think the driver of that cement truck was able to extinguish the fire. Nor was he able to drive it to the nearest repair shop.
And, worse yet, if the EV which catches fire is parked next to other vehicles, then the fire is probably going to be intense enough to spread to them, weather they are EV or gas or diesel powered. And the fire fighters can only sit back and watch it happen. There was a ship loaded with a mixture of vehicles, only a small percentage of which were EVs. One EV caught fire and it spread to all or almost all of the rest. There was nothing the fire fighters could do except watch from a distance.
I hate to bring up a possible doom's day situation, but there are many tall buildings where the lower levels have parking garages for the occupants' vehicles. I have worked in such buildings and parked my car in those lower levels. On 9-11 TWO skyscrapers were brought down by jet fuel fires. I can only imagine what would happen if a building with multiple floors of auto parking and a mixture of EVs and conventional fueled vehicles were to have a fire start in one of the EVs while parked in the middle of the day. They would be trying to evacuate the building THROUGH the lower floors where the fire was. And would that building be able to remain standing with the intense heat of such a fire? Or would it too fail and fall to the ground as happened on 9-11.
A conventional fire in a parked vehicle in such a building could be handled by a fire department. It may even be handled by a vehicle owner, as I did that day when my truck had a fire. But if an EV has a battery fire, what can anyone do except TRY to evacuate everyone to a safe distance?
It is not the number of fires that we need to be concerned about. It is the SEVERITY of them. And EV fires can be very, very severe. Someone needs to look into this before we have another 9-11 level disaster.
Gas vehicles are far more likely to catch fire than EVs, on the order of 7-40x more likely. Commercial trucks are disproportionally a larger percent of those fires.
https://www.warpnews.org/transportation/fewer-fires-in-electric-cars-compared-to-fossil-fueled-cars-in-the-worlds-country-with-the-highest-share-of-electric-cars/
https://rib.msb.se/filer/pdf/29438.pdf
https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/9671