Eco-friendly? Sure, but are electric vehicles hurricane-season friendly?
“I do love this car, and it is so fun to drive,” said Lori Smith, a Tesla owner. “Though, yes, it has a battery that can explode. I mean, there’s an added element of danger.”
Eh, not so much.
“Salt water and lithium-ion batteries: they do not mix. They’re a very dangerous combination.
So we need to encourage everybody that if they’re in the area where storm surge or any salt water can have that intrusion, they have to evacuate those vehicles,” said Amy Bollen with the South Trail Fire District.
Drivers in Florida take their chances driving through flooding, but according to South Trail Fire, taking a chance on a lithium battery isn’t the best idea.
“If you know that electric vehicle or that lithium-ion item was exposed to salt water, getting it isolated as soon as possible, call insurance companies and ask them for the directions, call tow companies, but always make sure that you identify and educate them,” said Bollen.
Ken Sposato, the co-owner of Cape Coral Towing and Recovery, towed over a dozen cars during Hurricane Debby’s flooding. A few were electric cars.
“We are towing more and more electric cars during these rain events,” said Sposato. “People try to drive through it, thinking they can make it.
They see other cars make it. So they figure their car can make it. And then we wind up with all those stalled out, floated out cars that we see.”
According to the source, it doesn’t take just driving through water to ruin your EV.
“Even if we’re not getting a hurricane, we do get a lot of hard rains down here, and so, I mean, I will not drive through large puddles of water that won’t do it after, after Ian, I won’t do it,” said Smith.
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This goes for more than just electric vehicles, too.
Electric bikes, golf carts, even charging stations: Salt water does more than just ruin these things. It can cause a fire that burns more intensely than most.