{"id":906778,"date":"2026-09-27T00:14:16","date_gmt":"2026-09-27T00:14:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/906778\/"},"modified":"2026-09-27T00:14:16","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T00:14:16","slug":"ev-owners-warned-to-plan-ahead-for-bushfire-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/906778\/","title":{"rendered":"EV owners warned to plan ahead for bushfire season"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier this year, experienced EV owner Nigel Raynard found himself in a town under bushfire evacuation orders with less than 15 per cent charge in his car battery.<\/p>\n

The owner of the EV chauffeur service in northern New South Wales was on holiday in January and found himself in the path of the Boddington fire, south of Perth.<\/p>\n

“The Tesla was telling me to turn around,” he said.<\/p>\n

“I was bull-headed thinking, ‘No, I’ll be fine’, but if the software tells you to go a different way, that’s what you should do.”<\/p>\n

Mr Raynard arrived at a town with an EV charger, but it was under evacuation orders and police were reluctant to let him in.<\/p>\n

\"Police<\/p>\n

On the other side of this police blockade was the EV charger the Raynard family needed to evacuate from the fire, but getting to it involved tense negotiations. (Supplied: Taj Raynard)<\/p>\n

“I tried to explain to the police officer, ‘Sorry to ask, but we have to go into that town’, and he was definitely not happy about that,” he said.<\/p>\n

“My car was saying the charger was active, but he was telling me the power was out.”<\/p>\n

The police finally let Mr Raynard pass the blockade and use the fast charger, where he spent 15 minutes getting the power he needed.<\/p>\n

The experience has left him worried that new EV owners might find themselves in a similar predicament.<\/p>\n

“Allow a little more battery than you need and have a back-up plan,” Mr Raynard said.<\/p>\n

“New owners need to be educated because unlike petrol\/diesel, you aren’t going to have a stop in every town.”<\/p>\n

Are EVs more of a worry during bushfires?<\/p>\n

Emma Sutcliffe lost her own EV to bushfire in Victoria, which burned the car but left the battery pack intact.<\/p>\n

“Any car in a bushfire is going to burn, depending on the severity of the bushfire,” she said.<\/p>\n

“It is not more likely to burn just because it has a lithium-ion battery in it.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Emma Sutcliffe left her EV to fight fires in Victoria at Little River in December 2018 but returned to find it burnt. (Supplied: EV FireSafe)<\/p>\n

Ms Sutcliffe is the CEO of EV FireSafe, an Australian company funded by the Department of Defence to research electric vehicle high-voltage battery fires and emergency response.<\/p>\n

She said EVs were “no more dangerous or likely to catch fire than a petrol or diesel car”.<\/p>\n

“But there is post-incident fire risk,” she said.<\/p>\n

“Even if the car looks completely burnt out, that battery can catch fire days, weeks, even months later.<\/p>\n

“We have seen a number of electric vehicles go through a bushfire and survive without that battery pack going into thermal runaway.”<\/p>\n

Thermal runaway is an out-of-control chemical chain reaction that can happen inside a lithium-ion battery and can lead to fire.<\/p>\n

There have been 15 verified electric vehicle fires in Australia.<\/p>\n

Ms Sutcliffe said it was more common to see a vehicle burnt out but the battery pack still intact.<\/p>\n

“In most electric vehicles, the battery pack is the strongest part of the vehicle,” she said.<\/p>\n

More EVs on the road this year<\/p>\n

EV popularity in Australia is increasing.<\/p>\n

According to the Electric Vehicle Council, there are now more than 684,000 electric vehicles, including hybrids, on the nation’s roads.<\/p>\n

At the end of August, there were more than 504,000 fully electric vehicles, up from 310,000 in August 2025.<\/p>\n

The NSW Rural Fire Service is more concerned about how people are going to get out of an area than what kind of car they are driving.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The town of Williams was the last option for charging for the Raynard family, but the town was under an evacuation order. (Supplied: Nigel Raynard)<\/p>\n

“We know that around the Christmas period, many people are going to start to consider travelling and camping, so ask [yourself], ‘What am I going to do if you go into a camp area? Is there enough power in the vehicle to get me somewhere safe or a location where I can power it?'” Superintendent Ben Shepherd said.<\/p>\n

“The same goes for those with petrol\/diesel cars, thinking about what is needed to move out of an area. It’s just a different kind of understanding about where to charge.”<\/p>\n

EV bushfire advantages<\/p>\n

Ms Sutcliffe said some EV brands had features that could prove critical in a bushfire.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The Raynards said their EV’s air filtration system helped them breath easier as they evacuated from the Boddington fires. (Suplied: Taj Raynard)<\/p>\n

“In 2019, people with respiratory trouble were using Teslas to sit in whilst the air was smoky,” she said.<\/p>\n

“They have very good air filters, and the car can sit for a very long period just with the filters running and not use too much power in the process.”<\/p>\n

Ms Sutcliffe said other EVs could double as a power source.<\/p>\n

“If the power is out during a bushfire period, think of the car as a power station on wheels,” she said.<\/p>\n

“In Japan, the Nissan Leaf is commonly used to go into disaster-affected areas to provide dispatchable power. You can plug in phones and equipment and lighting.”<\/p>\n

Mr Raynard said he would always choose an EV over a combustible engine.<\/p>\n

“With an EV, you wake up each morning with it fully charged; no need to store dangerous flammable liquids or travel from home to fill up,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Earlier this year, experienced EV owner Nigel Raynard found himself in a town under bushfire evacuation orders with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":906779,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[4376,64,63,43182,99,17470,474932,474933,11214,5023],"class_list":["post-906778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-asthma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bushfire","tag-business","tag-chargers","tag-charging-infrastructure","tag-electric-vehicle-charging-during-bushfire","tag-electric-vehicles","tag-holiday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=906778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906778\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/906779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=906778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=906778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=906778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}