When my grandfather was 85, he forgot to do all of the maitenance on his car. He drove like 40,000 miles without ever changing the oil and blew up the engine in his BMW 7 series. It wasn't exactly a cheap car.

Replacing the engine in the car was something like $7,000.

I see your point about safety - gas clearly isn't the safest substance in the world. But neither is electricity. My cousin is currently a police officer, and before that he was a first responder for car accidents. He has had specific official training to deal with hybrids becuase you have to avoid the battery cables after an accident when using the jaws of life and what not. And those batteries are more stable than lithium ion, in those cases they are simply concerned about compromising the battery cables. So it kind of cuts both ways.

This is a problem lithium ion powered electric cars. We shouldn't sweep it under the rug. It should be solved now while there are 10,000 electric cars and not 10,000,000 electric cars. It seems like the solution is a combination of educating/warning owners & notifying them by phone or email if the car starts to get too low. That isn't exactly the end of the world. But ignoring it is not the solution.