DeSantis warns Florida EV drivers to move cars to higher ground ahead of Hurricane Helene

As Hurricane Helene intensifies and moves toward Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis has warned electric vehicle owners in the state to move their cars to higher ground because of the risk of saltwater intrusion. When saltwater gets into an EV battery, it can cause fires days or even weeks after exposure.

“If you have an EV, you need to get that to higher land,” he said during a news briefing on Wednesday. “Be careful about that getting inundated. It can cause fires.”

Hurricane Helene is forecasted to become at least a Category 3 hurricane by the time it makes landfall, which is expected Thursday evening around Florida’s Big Bend area.

There are more than 250,000 EVs on Florida roads, according to the Department of Energy’s data on EV registrations by state. That’s second only to California, which has more than 1.2 million registered EVs; Texas has the next-highest, with more than 230,000.

More than 42,000 of Florida’s EVs are in the Tampa Bay area, which could see record high water levels during the Hurricane Helene storm surge.

EVs and Saltwater Intrusion

EVs pose a risk in storms because of saltwater intrusion, in which saltwater floods and corrodes the EV battery. That can create a chemical reaction that causes “extreme fire risk,” per the U.S. Coast Guard. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, hurricanes that have hit Florida have highlighted this risk, showing that saltwater-flooded EVs “pose major safety concerns to passengers, emergency responders, and recovery personnel.”

This was an issue during 2022’s Hurricane Ian, the administration notes, which affected between 3,000 and 5,000 EVs, 36 of which caught on fire. Fewer EVs caught on fire during 2023’s Hurricane Idalia in part because the hurricane was weaker, and because of warnings to move electric vehicles to higher ground.

“You’re in an area that is in the eye of where there can be storm surge, you have an electric vehicle—just know that when you have saltwater intrusion on that, those can catch on fire,” DeSantis said during the news briefing. “Those are very difficult to put out.”

EV fires are so hard to extinguish because of the lithium-ion batteries, which store an immense amount of energy. EV battery fires can burn for hours; after Hurricane Ian, E&E News reported that there were six fires in Naples caused by EVs submerged in seawater. Those flooded cars burned for “hours and hours” and required “thousands upon thousands of gallons of water,” according to the local fire department. Some startups are working on EV batteries that replace the internal, flammable solvents with with water or even saltwater, which reduces the risk of fires.

“This emerging threat has forced local fire departments to divert resources away from hurricane recovery to control and contain these dangerous fires,” Florida Senator Rick Scott wrote in a letter to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg in 2022.