one of the first tittilating demonstrations i saw in highschool chemistry was watching elemental sodium react with water.

lithium is even more reactive.

i personally am all for hybrids, because they let you get more torque without having to tweak the engine for it and lose cruise efficiency, but lugging a giant battery around is going to lead to more and more frequent incidents of unstoppable chemical reactions because lithium metal will oxidise with everything, nitrogen, CO2, and release enough heat to make sure that there keeps on being more reactive species it can oxidise on.

hybrids could even skip the dangerous lithium battery and use a more bulky but far safer carbon based supercapacitor.

those who are against electric cars are mainly taking issue with the clear danger of both lithium and even hydrogen itself, which also has a lot of dangerous properties compared to gasoline or especially diesel.

part of the reason why lithium is so hard to extinguish is exactly because it can reduce water to hydrogen and that can then burn as well if the temp is high enough and the mix is right (hydrogen is probably safer than lithium because its combustion ratio is a lot more fussy).