Ron DeSantis said EVs could catch fire if caught up in Hurricane Helene. Experts say he’s right — and that you should take these steps to protect yourself.
A burnt-out Tesla that exploded when it took on salt water from Hurricane Helene. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis told EV owners last week to get their vehicles to higher ground.
Ahead of Hurricane Helene’s arrival in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis urged electric vehicle owners to get their vehicles to higher ground.
“Be careful about that getting inundated,” he said at a news briefing last week. “It can cause fires.”
Helene, which began as a category four hurricane, made landfall in Florida on Thursday before moving northward into Georgia, the Carolinas, and Tennessee.
So far, it has killed at least 110 people, with hundreds more still missing. Around 2,000 people are still without power, according to the BBC.
Amid the chaos, DeSantis’ warning over electric vehicles is warranted, experts told B-17— and there are things EV owners should do to keep safe.
What EV owners should do
Tesla and the American Automobile Association (AAA) echoed DeSantis’ advice to get to higher ground before any possible flooding.
If an EV has already been submerged in water, Tesla warns owners not to attempt to start their vehicle.
Instead, it recommends safely towing or moving a vehicle at least 50 feet from buildings or combustible material after an authorized engineer has examined it.
However, it should still be treated with caution. Once the water recedes, the damage caused by submerging an EV in water remains.
Richard Bucknall, head of mechanical engineering at University College London (UCL), told B-17 that lithium batteries in EVs “can short circuit if flooded, especially in seawater, leading to immediate overheating and potential fire and explosion.”
“No road vehicle should be considered roadworthy after saltwater flooding, whether it’s an EV or anything else,” Haresh Kamath, director of distributed energy resources at the Electric Power Research Institute told USA Today after Hurricane Ian hit Florida in 2022.
“If you’ve experienced saltwater flooding, you should not be driving or trying to drive or even start that vehicle. You shouldn’t be getting into the vehicle.”
How big is the risk?
The risks to EVs during flooding have been studied for several years, although stats are limited.
According to the Associated Press, Hurricane Ian compromised the batteries of as many as 5,000 EVs, with 36 catching fire.
Lithium reacts violently with water and releases hydrogen gas in an exothermic reaction, with the gas catching fire. “Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a perfect container where violent storms are concerned so it isn’t a surprise to me or other engineers [that they could catch fire],” said Bucknall.
According to Tesla, the number of fires in electric vehicles is significantly lower than in petrol and diesel cars. It found that between 2012 and 2022, around one Tesla vehicle fire occurred for every 130 million vehicle miles traveled.
By comparison, data from the National Fire Protection Association and the US Department of Transportation indicates that one vehicle fire occurs in the US for every 18 million miles traveled.
Adam Wojcik, a professor at UCL’s Department of Engineering, said that EVs are less likely to catch fire than petrol cars. However, in a situation that involves flooding and contact with saltwater, the risks are higher.
“The only way of setting petrol on fire is with a spark, and it’s probably unlikely that you would get a spark in a situation that is not a crash or an accident,” he told B-17.
“But if water gets into EV batteries, that’s a different matter altogether.”
Demand for EVs is stalling in the US
Last year, BloombergNEF forecast the total value of all forms of EV sales will hit $8.8 trillion by 2030 and $57 trillion by 2050.
President Joe Biden set a target of having EVs make up half of all new cars sold in the US by 2030. However, demand for EVs in the US is falling.
Only 34% of US shoppers planning to buy a vehicle in the next two years say they’re likely to buy an EV, down from a year earlier.
That’s according to EY’s annual Mobility Consumer Index, which surveyed 20,000 respondents in 28 countries who said they were considering buying a new car in the next 24 months.
As B-17 previously reported, this may be partly due to the fact that electric vehicle shoppers are now much more difficult to please than the enthusiastic early adopters of years past.
Safety doesn’t appear to be the main concern — at least for now.
Around 24% of potential buyers cited range limitations as a top concern (and 23% said they were concerned about finding a place to plug in (down from 34%).
