I'm pretty sure anyone ever burned in a gas-fueled vehicle fire would gladly go back in time to fork over $40k to avoid that experience.
The reason gasoline is dangerous is that it stores a lot of energy. You need a lot of energy to move a heavy car a couple of hundred miles, and keep the occupants comfortable with heat and/or air conditioning. A battery in a Tesla contains a lot of energy. The dangers compared to a tank of gasoline are different, but in either case, the sudden and uncontrolled release of that energy can do a lot of damage.
A glass of water has a lot of energy stored in its atoms. The sudden and uncontrolled release of that energy could be catastrophic. The question isn't how much energy is in the system, but how hard is it for that energy to be released in an uncontrolled fashion.
The real issue is that those events are extremely rare given the intensely frequent use of ICE vehicles. Replace all the ICE with electric vehicles, and you'd see just as many electrocuted people. It's simply not a real argument.
The reason gasoline is dangerous is that it stores a lot of energy. You need a lot of energy to move a heavy car a couple of hundred miles, and keep the occupants comfortable with heat and/or air conditioning. A battery in a Tesla contains a lot of energy. The dangers compared to a tank of gasoline are different, but in either case, the sudden and uncontrolled release of that energy can do a lot of damage.