This is ridiculous, they're better off just saying "We don't like hybrids and EVs" instead.
There's no reason for why they added this rule. Motor Trend does a great job explaining this.
What sparked this restrictive idea?
www.motortrend.com
No Explanation Given
From all appearances, this rule was hastily added and not thought through. No reason for the ban is given, nor is any further instruction about what to do if too many EVs and hybrids show up in the parking lot and can't all be parked 30 feet from any other object. There are also no specifics about battery size or capacity, so a literal reading of this rule could disqualify any track car running a lightweight lithium-ion 12-volt battery, a common modification. To be sure, we checked the rest of the competition rulebook, which makes no other mention of lithium-ion batteries.
Competition Committee Minutes are restricted to paying club members and a page for proposed rulebook changes was only recently added to the website in the past year and makes no mention of this specific rule, so it's unclear why it was created. A search turned up no evidence of any accident involving an EV or hybrid at a NCCC-sanctioned event that might've motivated this rule change. The NCCC website's insurance page, insurance FAQs, and attached Blanket Certificate of Liability Insurance form make no mention of lithium-ion batteries.
It's also not a C8 thing, even if some Corvette purists are still mad about the engine moving to the middle of the car. The NCCC has specific guidelines in its rulebook for judging C8s in concourse events.
Gas-Powered Cars Catch Fire Way More Often
In all likelihood, the NCCC is reacting to recent EV fires sparking up in the news, which we should note are not representative of the real-world risk. According to National Fire Incident Reporting System data collected by the U.S. Fire Administration and analyzed by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), there were an average of 117,370 passenger vehicle fires between 2013 and 2017 (the most recent data available). How many of those car fires were hybrids and EVs? The data doesn't separate different drivetrains so we don't have an exact number, but we know it's small.
According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, there were roughly 250 million registered passenger vehicles in the U.S. in 2017. Of those, just over 6 million were hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and EVs, or 2 percent. If the number of fires involving hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and EVs was proportional to their share of the national fleet, that would mean they accounted for just 2,347 of those 117,370 fires per year. Put another way,
115,623 of those fires each year involved gas- and diesel-powered vehicles.
Do the math, and it means gas and diesel-powered passenger vehicles caught fire 50 times more often than hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and EVs combined between 2013 and 2017, and that's again assuming an equal incidence rate among those vehicle populations.
Note that this includes all hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and EVs and not just the ones using lithium-ion batteries. The NCCC ban explicitly targets lithium-ion batteries and not the nickel-metal hydride batteries used in most hybrids until recently (including every Toyota hybrid built before 2021).
www.motor1.com
