uh oh... they just realized that hurricanes mix salt water, and electric cars - and cause explosive battery fires. Naples Florida alone has had 4 since hurricane Ian

Florida State Fire Marshal Jimmy Patronis on Twitter wrote, “There’s a ton of EVs disabled from lan. As those batteries corrode, fires start. That’s a new challenge that our firefighters haven’t faced before. At least on this kind of scale."

This has been a known problem for some time, and Florida isn’t the first instance of it happening. In 2018, Italy’s Port of Savona became flooded. Stored there were Maserati hybrids for export. A number of them caught fire when the salt water leaked into the lithium-ion batteries.

“This is an issue many fire departments across southwest Florida are experiencing right now,” North Collier Fire District states. “These vehicles have been submerged in salt water, they have extensive damage and can potentially be serious fire hazards. No one was injured in the fire, traffic interruption was minimal, and the crews remained on scene with the vehicle for hours to ensure it was extinguished.”

To put out these very hot fires can take thousands of gallons of water to put out. Tesla’s emergency response guide says between 3,000 to 8,000 gallons of water are necessary to extinguish an EV fire.

 For gas-powered vehicles, it takes on average around 1,000 gallons of water to put out a fire.

 There have been many instances when after a few days the EV will catch on fire a second time. “It takes special training and understanding of EVs to ensure these fires are put out quickly and safely,” Patronis said. 

 Florida has 95,000 registered EVs according to the Department of Energy. It comes in second for the amount of EVs in each state only to California, with 563,000.

https://www.motorbiscuit.com/flooded-tesla-hurricane-ian-exploding-florida/