2024-02-08 23:19:38
Townsend’s research and words join the warnings heard last year from the two most important safety institutes in Europe and the US. “Electric vehicles express a worrying trend in consumer demand for heavier, more powerful and taller cars, which not only endanger other drivers but also have a negative impact on the environment. Of the 11 new cars we tested in the current series of crash tests, only three weigh less than two tons, and only one, the Smart 3, is classified as a family car,” stated the people of the European crash test, the Euroencap last November.
Dr. Michael van Ratingen, the organization’s secretary general, noted at the time: “For years, Euroencap has been accused of increasing the weight of cars. They thought that additional safety features meant additional mass. This was never really the case and the increase in vehicle weight that we see today is definitely not related to safety – it is stems from consumers’ preference for larger vehicles and electrification, with larger and larger batteries being used to assuage consumers’ range anxiety. But this is a trend that does not help either safety or the environment: large, heavy cars are generally less energy efficient than small, light cars, and there is a safety concern when both types These vehicles collide, or worse, when they are vulnerable road users.”
In March of last year, Raoul Arbeliz, vice president of IIHS, the Institute for Highway Safety, which is funded by American insurance companies, said: “When we first started testing electric vehicles in 2011, we were mainly concerned about the risk of the lithium ion batteries igniting in an accident. 55 crash tests of electric cars and zero fires later, I am concerned about the batteries, but about their weight, about the extra weight they bring to the vehicle and its effect on the safety of people on the road, especially passengers in lighter vehicles as well as pedestrians and cyclists.”
Arbeliz added that “there is a big difference between the first electric vehicle we tested, the 2011 Nissan Leaf, which weighed 1,500 kg, and the current generation of electric vehicles, some of which weigh more than 2,700 kg. These are large off-road vehicles and vans, loaded with power that requires a massive battery.”
“When two vehicles collide, the heavier vehicle pushes the lighter one back, and as a result the forces exerted on the occupants of the lighter vehicle are much greater than those exerted on the occupants of the heavier vehicle. Over the years, we have conducted a number of demonstration accidents that combined larger vehicles with smaller ones, to show The impact of size and weight on crashes In two tests in 2018, one with a medium SUV and a small car and another with a large car and a Mini, both small vehicles performed poorly, despite good ratings in our tests, which only reflect the level of safety in a collision with a vehicle of similar weight.
“Assuming that the new generation of heavy duty vehicles are designed to perform well in our crash tests, there is no reason why they cannot provide good protection for their occupants. In fact, their extra weight will give them greater protection in a multiple crash. Unfortunately, given the way these vehicles are designed today, the protection This increase comes at the expense of people in other vehicles.
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