CGA SB 343
The Connecticut General Assembly has raised a bill, SB 343, that proposes to “prohibit parking electric vehicles in parking garages.” This applies to residential and commercial garages. It is part of a larger bill that is about fire safety more generally, which is possibly why the committee of cognizance is the Public Safety Committee and not the Transportation Committee. Regardless, as ridiculous as this sounds, the bill has been raised. Public hearings are scheduled for March 7. There will be a vote, at least at the committee level. Hopefully, it won’t make it beyond that.
If you are interested in offering written or verbal testimony (either in-person or remotely), these are the links:
Why We Think This Provision Should Be Stricken
Electric Vehicles are sophisticated and highly regulated devices. EV fires are incredibly rare, much rarer than with internal combustion cars. Fires involving the high voltage battery are rarer still. A study in the Netherlands showed that only 38% of EV fires involved the battery.
Of the fires that do occur in EVs, usually it is due to an accident, not parking or charging. There have only been 434 EV battery fires since 2010 – in the entire world. (source: EVFiresafe).
There was a study published in 2020 by the Research Institute of Sweden that looked at whether the charging of electric vehicles in garages posed an unacceptable risk of fires. Based on the findings from available data and a literature review, there were no indications that charging of electric cars in parking garages would result in an increased probability of fire.
A study from the National Research Council of Canada, published in 2023, reported that there has been no large fire in a parking structure that was initiated by an EV fire.
If enacted, most EV owners would have no place to park or charge their vehicles. It would take a substantial portion of the level 2 public charging infrastructure offline. It would bedevil residents of urban, suburban, and rural communities alike.
This contradicts numerous legislative and regulatory efforts in the state to promote EV adoption, including the mandate that 100% of state new vehicle purchases be electric by 2030.
If there is such fear of lithium-ion batteries, then why not take this to its logical conclusion and ban mobile phones, tablets, laptops, and other electronics that rely on this technology. We don’t because they are safe. So are EVs.
We think this is a bad faith argument and that this provision should be stricken from the bill.
Read the news report below, from Norwalk, fairly recently.
This bill is a load of smelly, fowl substance.
https://www.thehour.com/news/article/norwalk-parking-garage-fire-ev-charging-station-18412586.php
An EV experiencing thermal runaway inside a crowded parking garage would be impossible to extinguish. In fact It nearly impossible to extinguish a burning EV on the outside!