EV struck by lightning but all good afterwards

A BYD Song Plus driven in appalling weather in Beihai, Guangxi, China, suffered a lightning strike. Two actually. Both driver and car survived the incident unscathed.

And if you need proof, watch the wipers – they continue to operate as normal. Other than some minor scorch marks on the roof, a mechanic said that there was no detectable damage. The battery, motor and electronics all functioned fine after the incident. 

Cars are designed to shrug off lightning which travels around the edges like a Faraday cage. While it seems logical that the rubber tyres protect the occupants from harm it is actually the car body that attracts the lightning in the first place (conductive) and then routes it around the outside edges to ground. Airliners are designed similarly with conductive frames that route the charge around the fuselage, keeping the occupants inside safe. 

Top Gear famously showed this to be true in 2004. Hammond’s VW Golf was struck by 800,000 volts of artificial lightning created at a Siemens lab in Germany. He survived without injury but was seriously hurt in a dragster crash two years later. After the prolonged artificial lightning test, everything in the Golf functioned as normal, and Hammond drove away as if nothing had happened.

Should this happen to you, stay inside the vehicle after a lightning strike. If you exit the vehicle, you then run the risk of becoming a lightning rod yourself. Believe in your car’s safety rating! As a point of mild interest, car makers don’t test their vehicles against lighting strikes.

The device was invented by Michael Faraday to shield contents from electromagnetic radiation. When hit by a charge, the cage retains the charge on the outside rather than travelling through it, choosing the path of least resistance.