Chevy Volt a fire hazard?

Jeff U'ren writes on the Chevy Volt owners facebook page:

The oil companies and their lobbyists have a lot of money. A whole lot of your money. They buy Congress with it. That's why we don't have any good energy legislation. But the good news is that nothing will stop electric cars from saving the day. And you keep your money and not give it to the oil companies. Then YOU buy Congress! Unless someone makes up a story about electric cars being more dangerous than gasoline cars and we believe that.

Right on cue I read in todays San Francisco Chronicle website an AP article titled
Battery fires prompt govt probe of Chevy Volt.  It turns out that there have been no fires in electric vehicles except as a result of severe crash tests, and those generally didn't happen until some time after the crash--i.e. plenty of time to get out of the vehicle and even have it towed to a repair shop where the ruptured batteries can be removed.  This compares to 266,000 actual fires and 520 deaths annually in internal combustion engine (ICE) cars (per Consumer Affairs).  That's one fire for every 1000 ICE cars on the road compared to none for the 4000 Volts, 8500 Leafs, plus several thousand Teslas and conversions.  The real story is how much safer electric cars are than ICE cars.  But most people only read the headline, so the disinformation works.