How do electric cars affect passengers?

November 29, 2025

Recently we shared a German study which found that electric and hybrid cars generated extremely high pulses of magnetic fields (over 1000 milliGauss)1.

Like many other modern cars, they also expose passengers to different types of radiofrequency (wireless) radiation, such as WiFi, LTE, Bluetooth, WiMax, WAVE (wireless access in vehicular environments), DSRC (dedicated short-range communications), RFID (radio frequency identification, NFC (near-field communication) and ZigBee. These signals are used for keyless entry as well as communicating intra-vehicle, vehicle-to-vehicle, vehicle-to-infrastructure and vehicle-to-everything or for vehicular ad-hoc networks.2 This is quite apart from the radiation emitted by passengers’ own wireless devices, such as mobile phones, smart watches, tablets and earbuds.

Electric cars can also emit radar. For example, the 2025 Model Y Teslas in some countries have been reported to use radar waves so they can detect information about the driver and passengers.3

This begs the question: how are people affected when they travel in these cars?

One man with a clear view on this is electric car owner Josef Tater. In 2021, Tater filed a lawsuit in the US against Nissan, claiming compensation for suffering that resulted following his purchase of a 2015 Nissan LEAF. Tater claimed that his once-good health deteriorated and he developed uncontrolled eye dilation, chest palpitations, memory and concentration problems and occasional hallucinations.

According to his lawsuit, ‘the plaintiff had a difficult time to distinguish what was real and what was not, and as a result was terminated from his job. On January 25th, the Plaintiff was hospitalized with inability to hear and speak. Going forward, the Plaintiff kept suffering physical and mental symptoms and his marriage fell apart as his wife filed for divorce.’

After release from hospital, Tater found that his symptoms worsened when he drove the car. ‘(H)e suffered chest palpitations, facial tingling combined with pressures on his checks that felt like the cheeks were about to collapse into his face and breathing difficulties.’

At the time of the lawsuit, Tater experienced chest pains, heart palpitations, low energy, insomnia, ringing in the ears, facial tingling and was prone to getting lost in his thoughts and losing track of time.

These symptoms are typical of Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity – the experience of unpleasant and often debilitating symptoms as a result of exposure to electromagnetic fields.5

In Tater’s car, the magnetic fields reported in the lawsuit were well within levels allowed by Australian standards and international Guidelines, but above levels classified as Class 2B (possible) carcinogens by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. They were:

  • Driver seat: up to 9.2 mG (floor) and up to 5.3 mG (top of seat)

     

  • Passenger seat: up to 13.1 mG (floor) and up to 4.9 mG (top of seat)

     

  • Back seat: up to 31.3 mG (floor) and up to 4.5 mG (top of seat)

     

  • Back seat: up to 12.6 mG (top of elevated floor panel at the centre of vehicle).

     

Tater is not the only person to report debilitating symptoms when in a car. Over the past 3 decades of working on this issue, I’ve been contacted by many people who’ve told me about the symptoms they experience in cars, too. Many have chosen to drive older model cars that don’t emit wireless radiation or to turn off the radiation in models of cars where this can be done.

Unfortunately, there’s no simple and practical way to reduce exposure from these cars (if it can be done at all). The best solutions are for manufacturers to design for the problem and for buyers to do their research before buying a car.

References

  1. High fields from electric and hybrid cars, 12 November, 2025.
  2. Gryz K, Karpowicz J, Zradziński P. Complex Electromagnetic Issues Associated with the Use of Electric Vehicles in Urban Transportation. Sensors (Basel). 2022 Feb 22;22(5):1719. doi: 10.3390/s22051719. PMID: 35270864; PMCID: PMC8914635.

     

  3. Rivian Wave, Telsa Activates In-Cabin Radar in Software Update 2025.2.6, 14.2.25,
  4. Carcomplaints.com, Nissan Leaf Electromagnetic Radiation Lawsuit Filed in Georgia, 12.07.21,
  5. Health and Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity, EMR Australia,


EMR Australia PL would like to thank Assoc. Prof Olle Johansson for drawing our attention to the Nissan LEAF lawsuit referred to in this article.

To reproduce this article for your network, please include the following text: Article reproduced with permission from EMR Australia, www.emraustralia.com.au

 

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