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Fact-checking a Trump-inspired fear.
As someone on the “will this thing kill me” beat, I was paying close attention when the former president of the United States recently expressed concern about electric-powered boats — apparently, the new aquatic twist on his electric car rant. “Let’s say your boat goes down and I’m sitting on top of this big powerful battery and the boat’s going down,” Donald Trump mused to a group of supporters in the landlocked state of Iowa. “Do I get electrocuted?”
Trump then dramatically upped the stakes by imagining the sinking electric boat was also being circled by a shark. “So I have a choice of electrocution or shark,” he went on. “You know what I’m going to take? Electrocution. I will take electrocution every single time.”
I wanted to find out if it was actually possible for Trump to be electrocuted and/or eaten by a shark (you know, hypothetically). It was a question that inspired many related, obsessive searches: What about if you drive an electric vehicle into a lake — would that electrocute you? Are first responders afraid to help people in submerged EVs? Would they leave you inside to die?!
Like I said, I can be a little morbid.
Below, I attempt to sort electrocution fact from electrocution fiction, with a few detours thrown in.
People have been using electricity to power their boats for over 120 years. In fact, until the high-energy storage density of oil became obvious around the turn of the century, electric boats actually enjoyed a bit of a heyday. (RIP to the electric canoe).
Moreover, if you’ve ever been on a marine vessel with any more sophistication than a rowboat, it probably had a battery and an electrical system on board, even if it wasn’t powered by an electric motor. Standard 12-volt marine batteries are used for everything from starting the main engine to running the lights, radio, or a trolling motor on board.
The modern iteration of the fully electrified boat movement is still in its relative infancy and faces some big challenges. But the short version is, we’ve been using electricity at sea for a long time and have gotten pretty good at not electrocuting ourselves. And the potential electrocution problems that do exist usually aren’t exclusive to high-voltage electric boats, but gas-powered ones as well.
First of all, battery packs on electric boats are designed to be watertight — duh, because they’re
on a boat. Believe it or not, electric boat makers have taken into account the fact that their products could, in a worst-case scenario, end up underwater. A spokesperson for Arc Boat Company, a flashy new player in the electric boat space, pointed me to their FAQ which explains that “our fault table — a list of possible points of failure and what to do about each one — is hundreds of lines long, meaning we’ve thought about, tested, and planned for every scenario you might encounter on and off the water.” (This seems like a job I could be good at.)
In fact, all the electric boat manufacturers I was in touch with said they meet a waterproofing standard that is either at, or just below, what is required for a submarine. The high-voltage batteries are additionally kept in “puncture-resistant shells,” so even if the boat somehow got completely mangled, the battery won’t just be openly exposed to the water.
Still, you definitely don’t want to sit on an exposed “big powerful battery,” as Trump suggests in his scenario, since you could theoretically interrupt the closed loop of a DC battery’s electrical circuit and get shocked. But just being on an electric boat that is sinking does not inherently expose you to electrocution danger.
Electric shock drowning is caused by faulty wiring at a dock or a marina leaking 120-volt alternating current into the water. That electricity can potentially kill a nearby swimmer on its own, or cause them to become incapacitated and drown.
This overwhelmingly happens in lakes and rivers, since human bodies are a better conductor of electricity than fresh water but not saltwater. “In saltwater, the human body only slows electricity down, so most of it will go around a swimmer on its way back to ground unless the swimmer grabs hold of something — like a propeller or a swim ladder — that’s electrified,” BoatUS, a marine insurance company and safety advocacy group, explains in its publication Seaworthy. “In fresh water, the current gets ‘stuck’ trying to return to its source and generates voltage gradients that will take a shortcut through the human body.”
While it’s possible that a poorly maintained electric boat charging station could cause this sort of leak, it’s not a danger exclusive to the electric boat world; gas-powered boats hooked to shore power kill people every year, as well. Regardless, this is why you should never, ever swim around boat docks, especially at lakes.
If you are worried about sea life getting electrocuted by a high-voltage shipwreck, don’t be. When a battery is underwater, its current will flow into the water between its two terminals. This is bad for the battery (it’ll cause it to rapidly discharge) but you don’t have to worry about the entire ocean or lake getting filled with charge and electrocuting everything in it; high-voltage batteries are powerful but not nearly that powerful. If a shark is in the immediate vicinity of the battery — like, trying to eat it — it might potentially get hurt, but this whole premise is also starting to get absurd with this many “what ifs” piled on top of each other. (Really, the environmental hazard of a leaking lithium battery on the seafloor is probably the greater cause for concern.)
You’ll have bigger problems than electrocution!
Like electric boats, EV batteries are obsessively insulated and the cars are designed with a number of fail-safes to isolate the battery in the case of an accident. Again, the people who thought up these things have already considered the worst-case scenarios. (Plus, getting sued for repeatedly electrocuting anyone who drives through a puddle is not good business).
What’s important to understand is that unlike the 12-volt batteries used in gas-powered cars, which are harmlessly grounded to the car’s large chassis, high-voltage systems in EVs use a floating ground, which helps prevent you from being electrocuted if the car becomes submerged. “It’s not grounded chassis — there is no return path for a vehicle that has been submerged to return that charge,” Joe McLaine, a safety engineer with General Motors, told me. “And if there [are] any faults or anomalies with the high voltage system, and it’s operating in normal functioning ranges, it’s going to shut off anyway.”
Yes — and it’s also true of driving in the rain, or washing your car, or charging in a downpour.
Trying to drive an EV through deep water is not a great idea for a number of very good reasons, but fear of electrocution isn’t one of them. The most likely scenario is that the water will cause any less-well-insulated electronic components to short out, causing the car to die — which is what happened when Motor Mythbusterstried to drive a Nissan Leaf through a water-filled trench.
Of course, gas-powered cars don’t love driving in floods, either, and there is some reason to believe that EVs might actually do better in flood conditions than their counterparts.
Back in 2016, Elon Musk tweeted that the “Model S floats well enough to turn it into a boat for short periods of time.” Just searching the words “EV” or “Tesla” and “flood” or “boat mode” will lead you to tons of videos of EVs plowing through deep bodies of water.
Don’t … do this. Most flood-related deaths occur in cars, and this fact doesn’t change just because your vehicle has a plug. Additionally, just because an EV drove through a flood successfully in a short video doesn’t mean there was no lasting damage from the water (which, it should be added, isn’t covered under warranty).
Florida’s State Fire Marshal’s Office reported there were at least 21 EV battery fires in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian in 2022. This is specifically a phenomenon caused by saltwater storm surge: When the car eventually dries out, the salt residue can remain behind on the battery, creating conductive “bridges” that lead to short circuits and fires.
This is still fairly rare: “The odds that your electric battery pack is on fire in Florida are about the same odds of you getting struck by lightning,” Joe Britton, the executive director of the Zero Emission Transportation Association, told Utility Drive. To be safe, FEMA recommends that any EVs flooded by saltwater be moved at least 50 feet away from any structures, other vehicles, or combustibles. And if you are expecting storm surge, move your EV preemptively to higher ground.
Tesla echoes this advice: “As with any electric vehicle, if your Tesla has been exposed to flooding, extreme weather events, or has otherwise been submerged in water (especially in salt water), treat it as if it’s been in an accident and contact your insurance company for support,” the company writes in its user manual.
“That is not true,” McLaine, the safety engineer with General Motors, told me. McLaine is responsible for GM’s Battery Electric Vehicle First Responder Training program, which has educated over 5,000 first- and second-responders in 25 different locations across the U.S. and Canada, and is focused on dispelling some of the rumors and misinformation around electric cars.
In addition to trainings like GM’s, a growing familiarity with the thousands of EVs now on the road has also made first responders more confident when responding to bad accidents. Orange cables are used to easily identify high-voltage components, which are placed “in areas and locations in the vehicle in which first responders typically wouldn’t have access to anyway,” McLaine explained.
First responders are trained to disable the high-voltage systems in an EV just like they would snip the cut loops around a 12-volt battery in a gas-powered vehicle accident. Additionally, most manufacturers make it extremely easy to find individual emergency response guides for their vehicles online, and there are various hotlines available for first- and second-responders when EV-related questions arise.
What First Responders Do in an EV Accidentwww.youtube.com
As for first responders handling cars that have been fully or partially submerged: Pretty much all of the emergency response documents I could find stated some version of “A submerged electric vehicle does not have a high voltage potential on the metal vehicle body, and is safe to touch” (this one specifically comes from the papers for the RAV 4 EV). Though first responders need to be careful with cutting into crushed cars, there are no shocking surprises when it comes to simply handling a submerged EV.
Are you kidding me? Electrocution would at least be quick! Trump got that part right: In this round of “would you rather,” you should take electrocution every time.
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At least one target of Chris Wright’s grant review may run into some sticky statutory issues.
The Department of Energy announced on Thursday that it’s reviewing some 179 awards made by the Biden administration worth $15 billion to ensure they were “consistent with Federal law and this Administration’s policies and priorities.”
But what happens when federal law and Trump’s priorities are at odds?
In the case of at least one awardee, the major U.S. steel producer Cleveland Cliffs, the DOE’s review process may become a mechanism to take funding that is statutorily designated for projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and channel it into long-lived fossil fuel assets.
Lourenco Goncalves, the CEO of Cleveland Cliffs, a major U.S. steel producer, said on an earnings call last week that the company was in the process of renegotiating its $500 million award under the Industrial Demonstrations Program. The DOE program funded 33 projects to decarbonize heavy industry, including cement, steel, aluminum, and glass production, with first-of-its-kind or early-scale commercial technologies.
Cleveland Cliffs was originally going to use the money to replace its coal-fired blast furnace at a steel plant in Middletown, Ohio, with a new unit that ran on a mix of hydrogen and natural gas as well as new electric furnaces. Now, the company is working with the Department of Energy to “explore changes in scope to better align with the administration’s energy priorities,” Goncalves told investors. The project would no longer assume the use of hydrogen and “would instead rely on readily available and more economical fossil fuels.”
The CEO later clarified that the company planned to “reline” its blast furnace at Middletown, extending its life, “now that the project is changing scope.”
But the Inflation Reduction Act, which created the Industrial Demonstrations Program, says the funds must be used for “the purchase and installation, or implementation, of advanced industrial technology,” which it defines as tech “designed to accelerate greenhouse gas emissions reduction progress to net-zero.”
“I don’t know at this point what Cleveland Cliffs can confidently say they’re going to do to substantially reduce greenhouse gasses and also deliver gains in public health and jobs to local communities, which is a prerequisite for IDP grant money,” Yong Kwon, a senior advisor for the Sierra Club’s Industrial Transformation Campaign, told me.
The memo announcing the Department of Energy’s review says that it has already reached some “concerning” findings, though it does not describe what was concerning or provide any further detail about the awards under review.
Compared to his peers at other agencies, Energy Secretary Chris Wright has been noticeably quiet about the Department of Government Efficiency’s efforts to slash funding across the Department of Energy. But in March, Axiosobtained documents that said more than 60% of grants awarded under the Industrial Demonstrations Program were being targeted. The following month, CNN reported that Cleveland Cliffs’ Middletown project was on the list slated for termination, noting that it would have secured 2,500 jobs and created more than 100 new, permanent jobs in JD Vance’s hometown.
At the time, Energy Department spokesperson Ben Dietderich told CNN that “no final decisions have been made” about the funding and that “multiple plans are still being considered.” Now it appears the Department may be negotiating with Cleveland Cliffs to develop a cheaper and more politically palatable project.
Meanwhile, House Republicans have also introduced a bill that would rescind any money from the Industrial Demonstrations Program that isn’t obligated, meaning that if the Department of Energy can find a way to legally terminate its contracts with companies, Congress may claw back the money.
The Industrial Demonstrations Program was the Biden administration’s “missing middle” grant program, designed to support projects that were past the early experimental stage, in which case they were no longer candidates for funding from the Advanced Research Projects Agency, but were also not ready for mass deployment, like those supported by the Loan Programs Office. In the case of Cleveland Cliffs, the funding was also aimed at making the U.S. a leader in the future of steelmaking, retaining thousands of jobs, saving the company money, and enabling it to command a higher price for its products.
“If you’re going to maintain blast furnaces, it means you have one foot in a technology that is now quickly becoming outdated that the rest of the global steel industry is transitioning away from,” Kwon told me.
David Super, an expert in administrative law at Georgetown University, told me in an email that if the Department of Energy provides and Cleveland Cliffs accepts funding that does not comply with statute, “the Department officials involved could be in violation of the Antideficiency Act and Cleveland Cliffs could be required to return the money, a modified contract notwithstanding.” The Antideficiency Act prohibits federal employees from obligating funds for projects that are not authorized by law.
Super added that the law also specifies that the money be awarded “on a competitive basis.” As Cleveland Cliffs won the competition with its hydrogen project, allowing it to use the money for a different project at the company’s plant “would thus violate the requirement of competitive awards and would allow the unsuccessful bidders to challenge this funding award.”
Neither Cleveland Cliffs nor the Department of Energy responded to a request for comment.
Leaks to the press have signaled that the Department of Energy may be taking a similar approach with the hydrogen hubs, potentially terminating contracts to develop renewable energy-based projects — all of which are in blue states — while allowing natural gas-based projects in red states to continue.
It is still not clear how the agency will handle its $3.5 billion direct air capture hubs, which news outlets have reported may also be under threat. On Friday, however, the oil and gas company Occidental, which was awarded a contract to develop a DAC hub in Texas, announced that the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company is considering investing up to $500 million in the project as part of a new joint-venture agreement. The press release notes that the agreement was signed during President Trump’s visit to the United Arab Emirates.
Last week, Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said during a confirmation hearing for Kyle Haustveit, the nominee to head the Office of Fossil Energy, that two carbon capture projects in her state were “in limbo” due to the agency’s spending review. The same day, in another hearing, Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida accused Wright of having frozen $67 billion worth of funds and asked him to commit to releasing it.
Wright denied this. “We’re not withholding any funds and we’ve paid every invoice we’ve had for work done and funds that are due,” he replied. But he went on to clarify that the agency is “engaging with” recipients “to make sure American taxpayer monies are being spent in thoughtful, reasonable ways.”
According to efficiency department data, the DOE has “terminated” 39 contracts worth $60 million and five grants worth $3.4 million. The contracts include news subscriptions, various technical support services, and a $22 million contract with consulting firm McKinsey for “rapid response deliverables” for the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, the department that runs the Industrial Demonstrations Program. The grants include three Advanced Research Projects Agency awards to explore using geologic stores of hydrogen, and another to reduce methane emissions from natural gas flares.
On budget negotiations, Climeworks, and DOE grants
Current conditions: It’s peak storm season in the U.S., with severe weather in the forecast for at least the next six days in the Midwest and East• San Antonio, Texas, is expected to hit 108 degrees Fahrenheit today• Monsoon rains have begun in Sri Lanka.
The House Budget Committee meeting to prepare the reconciliation bill for a floor vote as early as next week appears to be a go for Friday, despite calls from some Republicans to delay the session. At least three GOP House members, including two members of the Freedom Caucus, have threatened to vote no on the budget because a final score for the Energy and Commerce portion of the bill, which includes cuts to Medicaid, won’t be ready from the Congressional Budget Office until next week. That is causing a “math problem” for Republicans, Politico writes, because the Budget Committee “is split 21-16 in favor of Republicans, and Democrats are expecting full attendance,” meaning Republicans can “only lose two votes if they want to move forward with the megabill Friday.” Republican Brandon Gill of Texas is currently out on paternity leave, further reducing the margin for disagreement.
House Speaker Mike Johnson is also contending with discontent in the ranks over cuts to clean energy tax credits. “It’s not as bad as I thought it was going to be, but it’s still pretty bad,” New York Republican Andrew Garbarino, a co-chair of the House Bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus, told Politico on Thursday. But concerns about the cuts, which would heavily impact Republican state economies and jobs, do not appear to be a “red line” for many others, including Georgia’s Buddy Carter, whose district benefits from Inflation Reduction Act credits for a Hyundai car and battery plant that is among the targets for elimination. You can learn more about the cuts Republicans are proposing to the IRA in our coverage here.
The Swiss carbon removal company Climeworks is preparing for significant cuts to its workforce, citing the larger economic landscape and the Trump administration’s lack of consistent support. The company currently has 498 employees, but is undergoing a consultation process, indicating it is looking to cut more than 10% of its workforce at once, SwissInfo.ch reports. “Our financial resources are limited,” Climeworks’ co-founder and managing director Jan Wurzbacher said in comments on Swiss TV.
Though Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is a known proponent of carbon capture, and there had been excitement in the industry that Trump’s attempts to expedite federal permitting would benefit carbon storage sites, the administration has also hollowed out the Department of Energy’s carbon removal team, my colleague Katie Brigham has reported. The ongoing funding cuts and uncertainty have made it difficult to get information from the government that could affect Climework’s Project Cypress in Louisiana, although Wurzbacher stressed that “we are not currently aware that our project would be stopped.”
Energy Secretary Chris Wright announced in a Thursday memo that the department will be reviewing at least $15 billion worth of grants awarded to “power grid and manufacturing supply chain projects” under the Biden administration, Reuters reports. “With this process, the Department will ensure we are doing our due diligence, utilizing taxpayer dollars to generate the largest possible benefit to the American people and safeguarding our national security,” Wright said in his statement.
The memo goes on to note that the DOE plans to prioritize “large-scale commercial projects that require more detailed information from the awardees for the initial phase of this review, but this process may extend to other DOE program offices as the reviews progress.” Projects that don’t meet the DOE’s standards could be denied, as could projects of grantees who fail to “respond to information requests within the provided time frame, does not respond to follow-up questions in a timely manner.” As of last week, Wright told lawmakers, “we’ve canceled zero” existing projects so far, E&E News writes; the agency will reportedly be reviewing at least 179 different awards during its audit.
The number of National Weather Service offices ending 24-hour operations and severe weather alerts is increasing. On Thursday, The San Francisco Chronicle confirmed that California’s Sacramento and Hanford offices, which provide information to more than 7 million people in the Central Valley, have been forced to reduce service due to “critically reduced staffing.”
Eliminating 24-hour service is especially concerning for the Central Valley and surrounding foothills, where around-the-clock weather updates can be critical. “These are offices that have both dealt with major wildfire episodes most of the past 10 years, and we are now entering fire season,” Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA and UC Agriculture and Natural Resources, told the Chronicle. “That’s a big, big problem.” Swain additionally shared on LinkedIn a map he’d put together of regions in the U.S. that no longer have full-service weather coverage, including “a substantial chunk of Tornado Alley during peak tornado season and the entirety of Alaska’s vast North Slope region.” The NWS is additionally seeking to fill 155 vacancies in coastal states that could face risks as the Atlantic hurricane season begins at the end of the month, The Washington Post reports. An estimated 500 of 4,200 NWS employees have been fired or taken early retirements since the start of Trump’s term.
Heatmap’s “most fascinating” EV of 2025 just got pushed back to 2026. The Ram 1500 Ramcharger — which has a 140-mile electric range as well as a V6 engine attached to a generator to power the car when the battery runs out — is now set to launch in the first quarter of next year due to “extending the quality validation period,” Crain’s Detroit Business reported this week. Parent company Stellantis also pushed back the launch of its fully electric Ram 1500 REV until summer 2027, with a planned model year of 2028. “Our plan ensures we are offering customers a range of trucks with flexible powertrain options that best meet their needs,” Stellantis spokeswoman Jodi Tinson told Crain’s in an email. Though you now have even longer to wait, you can read more about the car Jesse Jenkins calls “brilliant” here.
GMC
The 2026 GMC Hummer EV just got even more ridiculous. “Thanks to the new Carbon Fiber Edition,” the 9,000-pound car “can zoom to 60 miles per hour in 2.8 seconds,” InsideEVs reports.
A conversation with Jillian Blanchard of Lawyers for Good Government about the heightened cost of permitting delays
This week I chatted with Jillian Blanchard, vice president of climate change and environmental justice with Lawyers for Good Government, an organization that has been supporting beneficiaries of the Inflation Reduction Act navigate the uncertainties surrounding tax credits and grant programs under the Trump administration. The reason I wanted to chat with Jillian is simple: the IRA is under threat for the first time under a Republican Congress. I wanted to understand how solar and wind projects could be impacted by the House Republican reconciliation bill and putting IRA tax credits in doubt. I learned a lot.
The following conversation was lightly edited for clarity.
Okay, Jillian, what’s the topline here? How would the GOP reconciliation bill impact individual projects’ development?
There are big chunks of the reconciliation bill that will have dramatic impacts on project development, including language that would repeal or phase out bipartisan and popular tax credits in a way that would make it very, very difficult to invest in projects. I can get into the weeds next.
But it’s worth saying first – the group of programs aside from tax credits that [House Republicans] would repeal represents every single part of America. Hundreds of projects that will not go forward if these programs are not going well. And they have several legally obligated grants that EPA has already mucked up in a litany of ways. But what they’re proposing to do is to pull the rug out from under those programs. On top of that they want to pull any unobligated funding out.
I think it’s extremely misrepresentative to say these are not big cuts. They’re significant cuts to clean air and clean water across the board.
Help me get into the weeds about how phasing out the credits will make it harder to invest in a project.
Right now, a bank might want to invest a certain amount of money in a clean energy project because they know on the back end they can get 30% or 40% back on their investment. A return through tax credits. They can bank on that, because tax credits are a guarantee.
Was that an intentional pun? “Bank”?
Yeah, it is. I love a good pun. You opened the floodgates, that was a mistake.
But anyway, the program itself was supposed to be around until at least 2032 and the bank could bank on those tax credits. That’s a big runway, because projects could get delayed and you could lock in the credit as soon as you started construction.
Now they’re doing a phase-out approach where if your project is not placed into service before a certain date, you don’t avoid the phase out. You don’t get any protections if you’re starting your project now or next year. It has to be placed in service before 2028 or else your project may not be eligible. You are constructing it, you are financing it, but then through no fault of your own – a storm or whatever – then suddenly that project is no longer entitled to get 30% or 40% back.
That’s a big risk. And banks don’t like risk.
Opposition on the ground also delays projects the way a storm does. Would this empower those opponents?
Oh, totally. Totally. If anyone wants to fight a project, a bank might be even less likely to invest in it. The NIMBYs for that particular project become a risk.
What would you tell a developer at this moment who is wondering about the uncertainty around the IRA?
I would tell them that now is the time to speak up. If they want to stay in this business and make sure their energy stays as low-cost as it already is, they need to speak up right now, no matter what their political party affiliation is. Make it clear solar isn’t going away, wind isn’t going away, storage isn’t going away. These are markets America needs to be competitive with the rest of the world.