Electric Cars Keep Bursting Into Flames In Florida

Hurricane Ian brought about billions in injury and upended life, but several men and women predicted that it would lead to electrical cars to burst into flames.

But that is just what occurred.

In the times next Hurricane Ian, the saltwater flooding in coastal locations brought on the lithium-ion batteries in electrical automobiles to combust.

Firefighters in Naples, for illustration, essential to extinguish six blazes in EVs that had been submerged in seawater.

Heather Mazurkiewicz, a spokesperson for the hearth department, stated firefighters required “hundreds on hundreds” of gallons of h2o to extinguish the EV fires — substantially extra than what a common gas motor vehicle hearth would require.

Even even worse, a person of the EVs reignited, destroying two homes.

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Why EVs are burning

Eric Wachsman, the Director of Maryland’s Electricity Institute, informed CNBC that lithium-ion battery cells have electrodes positioned near with each other and are filled with a flammable liquid electrolyte.

When the battery cells get harmed or defective, “this flammable liquid could get into what is actually identified as a thermal runaway situation, where it just commences form of boiling, and that final results in a fireplace,” Wachsman mentioned.

For this rationale, some providers, this sort of as Tesla and Ford, are switching to lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries, which are a great deal a lot less combustible.

But that isn’t going to quit the cars and trucks that already have lithium-ion battering from catching fireplace.

Florida usually takes action

To defend initial responders and firefighters, Jack Danielson, government director of the National Highway Site visitors Safety Administration, directed those “not concerned in fast lifesaving missions” to determine flooded electric cars with lithium-ion batteries and move them “at minimum 50 toes” absent from other structures, autos, and combustibles.

Senator Rick Scott also wrote a letter to U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, D, calling for action.

“This emerging threat has forced area fire departments to divert means away from hurricane restoration to management and contain these unsafe fires,” Scott wrote. “Alarmingly, even after the auto fires have been extinguished, they can reignite in an prompt.”

There are in excess of 95,000 registered EVs in Florida, the next-maximum variety in the country.