A high Florida state official warned Thursday that firefighters have battled a lot of fires brought on by electric vehicle (EV) batteries waterlogged from Hurricane Ian.
EV batteries which have been waterlogged within the wake of the hurricane are prone to corrosion, which may result in sudden fires, in response to Jimmy Patronis, the state’s high monetary officer and fireplace marshal.
“There’s a ton of EVs disabled from Ian. As these batteries corrode, fires begin,” Patronis tweeted Thursday. “That’s a brand new problem that our firefighters haven’t confronted earlier than. Not less than on this type of scale.”
“It takes particular coaching and understanding of EVs to make sure these fires are put out rapidly and safely,” he continued in a follow-up tweet. “Due to [North Collier Fire Rescue] for his or her laborious work.”
Firefighters try to put out a hearth began from a waterlogged electrical car after Hurricane Ian slammed Florida’s west coast. (Jimmy Patronis / Twitter)
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Patronis revealed a video of firefighters in Naples, Florida, battling a hearth began from a Tesla EV’s battery. A bystander is overheard within the video saying that the crew had used a whole lot of gallons of water trying to place the hearth out.
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Final week, Hurricane Ian pummeled cities along Florida’s west coast together with Naples and Fort Myers, making landfall as a Class four storm. The hurricane triggered greater than 100 deaths and over 1,000,000 residents to lose energy.
It’s unclear what number of EVs have been impacted or destroyed by the storm.
In the meantime, customers are more and more turning to EVs because the Biden administration continues to push a inexperienced transition involving zero-emission vehicles. Between April and June, EVs accounted for five.6% of latest automobile purchases within the U.S., up barely from the primary three months of 2022, in response to Kelley Blue E-book.
Shortly after taking workplace, President Biden introduced a aim of guaranteeing that 50% of latest automobile gross sales can be EVs by 2030.
The Biden administration has additionally taken a lot of steps to incentivize People to shift to EVs. The president signed the Inflation Reduction Act, a invoice that included a provision that awards People a tax credit score price $7,500 per EV buy, into regulation in August, and the Division of Transportation has labored to create a federal EV freeway charging community.
Nevertheless, critics have blasted the administration for giving a “misunderstanding” about EVs, noting that they’re costly and sometimes unreliable.
“[The EV push] is absolutely form of a con job,” Myron Ebell, the director of the Aggressive Enterprise Institute’s Heart for Power and Surroundings, informed FOX Enterprise in July. “It could be an excellent deal for some individuals in some locations beneath some circumstances. However by-and-large proper now, it isn’t an excellent deal.”