Hurricane Sandy Reveals A Flaw in the Toyota Prius

After several models caught fire after being submerged in water at a New Jersey port during Hurricane Sandy, the Fisker Karma received a lot of bad press. Now it seems that the luxury hybrid wasn’t alone in its combustion.

New reports show that three Toyota Prius models parked at the same location also burned in the storm’s aftermath. After being submerged in saltwater, both the standard Prius hybrid and Prius plug-in hybrid models caught fire as a result of the storm. According to reports, there were 4,000 Toyota vehicles, 2,128 of them being hybrid models, at the Port during the storm. It is believed that it would take extraordinary circumstances for the hybrids to catch fire because only three actually caught fire.

“One Prius out and out burned, the other just kind of smoldered and got really hot,” said Cindy Knight, a Toyota spokeswoman. “These were definitely extraordinary circumstances. Once the salt gets in there, it;s ready to do damage.”

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