Viral videos of EVs catching fire after Hurricane Helene raise safety concerns in Florida

A Tesla that caught fire during Hurricane Helene in St. Pete Beach, Florida, on September 28, 2024.

Soon after Hurricane Helene barreled into northwestern Florida, local government officials shared footage of an electric vehicle catching fire in a flooded garage.

The video, posted by Pinellas County officials on social media, came with a warning for EV owners about the risks posed by salt water, which can corrode lithium-ion batteries and cause them to short-circuit and overheat. Don’t “charge, drive, or store your EV or E-bike in your home or garage,” the post said. It recommended they “move the EV or E-bike 50 feet away from any other combustible material” and “have the vehicle towed to a dealership for inspection.”

Electric Vehicles that have been flooded in saltwater can catch fire. If you evacuated and left an electric vehicle or golf cart in your garage or under a building and you are not able to get to it or move it, we want you to let us know. /1 pic.twitter.com/dpfiXRAGuR

— Pinellas County (@PinellasGov) September 28, 2024
Florida officials said on Tuesday that they had since confirmed 16 lithium-ion-battery fires related to Hurricane Helene’s storm surge, six of which were in EVs. Electric golf carts, e-bikes, and other battery-powered devices are also a hazard. The fires led Florida’s chief financial officer and fire marshal, Jimmy Patronis, to call on automakers to be more proactive about notifying customers about moving their EVs to higher ground ahead of a storm (as Gov. Ron DeSantis did before Helene arrived) and about what to do if an EV is flooded.

“It’s not too late for these manufacturers to send out notifications and fire safety information directly to their consumers,” Patronis said in a statement, adding that his office was coordinating with emergency responders to make residents aware of the risks.

The warnings come at a critical time for the EV industry. Consumer demand for EVs has been slower than expected this year, and Republicans including JD Vance have attacked the industry in the run-up to the presidential election in November. J.D. Power has forecast that EVs will account for 9% of the market this year — a figure the group revised down from 12% because of slower adoption. Surveys have suggested that Americans are a lot more concerned about finding chargers than safety, but viral videos of EV fires could fuel skepticism.

Brent Gruber, the executive director of J.D. Power’s electric-vehicle practice, told B-17 that because of the recent fires, his team planned to begin tracking consumers’ concern about EV fires.

Some data from the Transportation Department and Tesla suggests EVs catch fire less often than hybrid or gas-powered cars on the road or in crashes. Saltwater storm surges during Hurricanes Ida, Ian, and now Helene pose a risk to lithium-ion batteries, but it’s not clear how often EV fires occur during extreme weather events.

A spokesperson for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said its data on vehicle fires was limited to fires after fatal crashes. The agency said that since Hurricane Ian struck Florida in 2022, it has monitored reports of EV fires during coastal storms in the southeastern and northeastern US and in California. It said reports of EV fires resulting from saltwater flooding came only from Florida.

“More research is underway to better understand the interaction of high-voltage battery systems and saltwater immersion,” the spokesperson said. They added that the agency had proposed updating some safety requirements for EV batteries to reduce the risk of these fires.

Albert Gore, the executive director of the Zero Emission Transportation Association, which represents EV makers like Tesla and Rivian, told B-17 that manufacturers had done a lot of outreach over the past decade to local fire departments about EV-battery safety. He emphasized that the fires seemed to be limited to coastal regions where saltwater storm surge is a risk and argued that EVs in general are much less likely to catch fire than gas-powered vehicles.

“The most important piece of information to communicate is if you live in an area where there’s a risk of hurricanes and storm surge, it’s really important to move that vehicle to higher ground,” Gore said.

Several fire departments along Florida’s coastline told B-17 that they’d been educating their emergency responders and the public about how to prevent and put out EV fires since Hurricane Ian in 2022.

Kelsey Grentzer, a spokesperson for the government in Pinellas County, which covers St. Petersburg and Clearwater, said that so far during Hurricane Helene, emergency responders in the county had been called out to at least 93 vehicle fires. Grentzer said they were still analyzing the breakdown of how many were gas cars versus EVs.

Heather Mazurkiewicz, a spokesperson for the North Collier Fire Control and Rescue District, which covers Naples, didn’t have an exact figure for Helene but said the district had been taking the problem seriously.

“There’s no predictability as to how or when a fire will start from the battery compartment. They’re extremely volatile,” Mazurkiewicz said.

Even after an EV battery fire appears to be extinguished, lingering stored energy can cause what’s known as a “thermal runaway,” a cycle of overheating and over-pressurizing. Putting out the battery fire can require more than 10,0000 gallons of water, Mazurkiewicz added.

The volatility was on display in the Pinellas County officials’ viral video. The EV owners told a local Fox affiliate that they narrowly escaped their home in Siesta Key as it became engulfed in flames and that they didn’t know that a small amount of flooding could ignite the EV.