I am not interested in a hybrid however my biggest fear with any hybrid, electric car or vehicle with substantial juice and rational or not is explosion, fire, battery acid. In that order.

In my mind if you were in some kind of wreck that caused a battery of that size to short straight to ground I can not imagine what would happen. With conventional vehicles when your battery shorts to ground it explodes and hopefully you do not get any acid on you. I am sure there are fuses and such in electric vehicles to prevent this but couldnt the battery itself be pierced or something equivelent to metal such as the Car's body touching both leads causing it to go straight to ground and exploding?

In a similar situation, what if rather than exploding it just catches fire fueled by the same potent battery?

I know hybrids have been around for a while now but still I can not help thinking about this when I think of these cars. I guess it this were a real issue we would hear about it more?