It seems that electric vehicles (EV's) need to go on a diet.
Safety experts are grappling with an array of infrastructure burdens and dangers associated with electric vehicles, which can weigh up to 50% more than traditional automobiles thanks to their heavy lithium-ion batteries.
Heavy electric vehicles damage roads, bridges and parking garages. Some can plow through highway safety guardrails and pose a greater danger to gasoline-powered cars, pedestrians and bicyclists.
. . .
“Significantly increasing passenger vehicle weights combined with recently reduced structural design requirements will result in reduced factors of safety and increased maintenance and repair costs for parking structures,” the engineers wrote. “There are many cases of parking structure failures, and the growing demand for EVs will only increase the probability of failure.”
Another scary EV safety threat unfolded this fall at the Midwest Roadside Safety Facility in Nebraska.
Engineers pitted an electric-powered pickup truck against a standard highway guardrail.
They chose one of the heaviest EVs on the market — the 3.6-ton Rivian R1 — and sent it speeding straight toward the metal guardrail at 62 miles per hour.
In a second experiment, engineers hurtled a Rivian down the road at the same speed and steered it into the guardrail at an angle.
In both cases, the Rivians ripped through the guardrail and continued onto the other side of the road.
. . .
“[EV's] extra weight will afford them greater protection in a multi-vehicle crash,” Raul Arbelaez, vice president of the Vehicle Research Center at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, wrote in March. “Unfortunately, given the way these vehicles are currently designed, this increased protection comes at the expense of people in other vehicles.”
. . .
Eliminating many gas-powered vehicles and substituting heavier electric cars or SUVs could create crumbling residential roads built for lighter traffic volume.
Transportation engineers have warned that EVs could also shorten the life spans of bridges by adding to the stress, wear and tear caused by heavy commercial trucks.
There's more at the link.
That's definitely a matter for concern. One can compare it to firearms ballistics: a lighter bullet can be propelled to higher velocity, but it slows down quickly in flesh when it hits its target. A heavier bullet is slower, but its mass gives it more momentum, and it decelerates more slowly in flesh, allowing it to penetrate deeper. The same principles apply to vehicles. The lighter the vehicle, the less "penetrating power" it has in an accident. Heavier vehicles . . . not so much.
I'd been more focused on the problem of lithium batteries catching fire. They're very difficult to extinguish, and frequently flare up again without warning. Also, water exposure (particularly salt water) during flooding has led to serious battery issues with EV's. However, this report indicates we may have a much bigger problem to deal with. Rebuilding our infrastructure to handle the extra weight of EV's may be simply unaffordable.
Peter
19 comments:
The power hungry, greedy and vastly superior(just ask them) giant egos that run everything don't give a damn about the condition of our roads and bridges, they fly. They fly everywhere in aircraft that do not pollute or affect the weather... at least not nearly enough to matter (just ask them). The plans they have to eliminate around five billion of planet Earths useless eaters is going to solve the problem anyway (just ask them).
Stand by. This late Autumn's gala extravaganza generated by our elites will be the best yet. And afterwards, parking structures and roads will be converted into city green areas and nature walkways.
See? No problem.
Even worse, most states don't have any way of collecting highway taxes from EVs other than license plate sales.
You know, the same taxes that pay for road maintenance, new guard rails, signage, all those silly things.
The road system can't adequately handle the EVs that are on it now, just like the electric grid (which is why so many charging stations have diesel gensets...)
This issue of heavy weighted vehicles causing more damage makes sense to me. Currently, some 'car crash attorneys' who target suits against tractor trailer vehicles point out that the much heavier vehicle causes more deaths and damages to others. So a heavier car doing same action makes sense. Th question is - is it the owner of the vehicle or the manufacturer who will be blamed ?
Maybe if the EVs only used skinny electrons they could lose some mass?
This past weekend I was visiting with one of my grandsons who works assembling Fords (trucks). He has a hybrid sedan that he is about to trade in. He was complaining about how the extra weight from the battery back eats rear tires and how the rear wheel alignment is easily messed up. He is NOT planning on getting another hybrid or an EV after his experience.
With the incentives and discounts he can get, it makes much more sense to trade the car in than to do the maintenance including battery pack replacement that the car will be needing soon.
This also sounds like the BS over SUVs vs. 'smart cars' a few years ago... Law of gross tonnage ALWAYS wins.
No problem.
Figure out the lifelong taxes paid by the average internal combustion engine vehicle owner, and charge EVs 10% of that amount annually, forever. Use the money for infrastructure repairs and maintenance.
That, coupled with justifiably much higher insurance premiums for collateral injuries and deaths in other vehicles caused by EV owners, and the last EV will roll off the line by about October of this year.
Dulce et decorum est.
EV's don't have to be huge and ridiculously heavy -- Obviously American ones do, because Americans are huge and ridiculously heavy and also they know that they're in an arms race against their fellow psychotic fellow (it is to laugh) citizens (it is to laugh more) who are all consumed by barely suppressed rage at various things and tend to take it out on the road. Not to mention the 13 do 50 who have decided that the freshly-minted St Floyd medals on their dashboards give them the right to drive even less safely than they did before. Which is pretty much the way the cops now see it too. Plus tort lawyers and defensive armouring up by manufacturers. Safety is nice to have, but doesn't take a brain the size of a planet to figure out that the safety regime has gone all the way around past 12 o'clock on the dial by now.
I've been driven around (ride-sharing apps) in numerous EVs (predominantly Tesla, BYD, MG) which get pretty much continuous usage and the drivers are uniformly happy about their choices. Yes for sure there are going to be some regulatory and financial incentives in parts of Asia I frequent which kick various cans down the road -- just as they do in the West. But for city commuting in sane countries which have nuclear power plants or abundant natural gas... why the hell give it a go and see how things pan out down the track. Frankly there is ZERO MBA-bullshit or Economist/FT Wanker Reader Midwit or Big Brain analysis which can nut out the consequences pro- or minus- over 20-50 years. So if the market exists let's just find out.
Now obviously these things don't make sense in America because you're barely able to generate enough electricity to heat and cool yourselves because you're in late stage societal collapse and you'll never build another major interstate or freeway again until after you've been through the fire. Probably never manage to fill in all the potholes in Chicongo before that happens, honestly. I'd stick to two-stroke and diesel, if I were you there. Let's not even talk about nuclear power stations or upgraded transmission systems.
My HD LiveWire runs at 562 lb.
My HD Dyna runs at 663 lb.
I don't see a problem.
I'd like to see some weight comparisons - for example, full size pickup trucks are mostly 6,000+ lbs, so the electric trucks aren't much heavier.
Jonathan
Highway barriera should be constructed to stop commercial vehicles, not just passenger cars. Do that and the problem of heavier EVs is solved.
It's tiring living through the arms race with vehicles. Remember when most people drove smaller cars, and the only pickups you ever saw belonged to tradesmen and farmers? Now everyone feels the need to drive an up-armored school bus as their personal vehicle. For safety. Because these things don't handle, brake poorly, suck fuel, and cost a fortune. But there's room for little Jimmy's entire soccer ball collection, plus snack and cup holders galore. And you just have to have that 400hp engine, so you can put-put to the grocery store 3 miles away and back, using up a gallon of premium gas.
Stupid.
Dan has the right idea. Barriers need to be stronger and taller. I don't know what is going to contain a tractor trailer that goes off the road; when this happens on the highway by us the guard rail is torn and twisted for dozens of yards, and there's still massive tire gouges in the median between the lanes.
Using the longest bridge in Manhattan what is the tonnage rate for it? How much does the heaviest EV weight. Now what happens is the bridge is completely full of all EV and stopped. Is the weight of EV's greater than the bridge rated for? That's what their goal is that all auto's are EV's so at some point this will be a factor in rush hour.
I have zero knowledge of any engineering so hope this clumsy question makes sense.
Why not just maintain the roads and highway infrastructure using the same fake money we allocate to defending Israel and Ukraine? We don't actually have it but we sure seem able to come up with 95 BILLION overnight whenever someone rings the bell loud enough.
@drew, part of the reason for the size increasing on vehicles is the EPA mpg regulations. They are much stricter on smaller vehicles than on larger ones.
This first killed the station wagon, as that needs to meet the passenger car standards, so people moved to the minivan and SUV as replacements.
not everyone can get away with a tiny car with little passenger and cargo room.
the laws on child booster seats and riding in the bed of a pickup also require families to have larger cars than they used to, as you need more officially sanctioned seats to hold the same number of people.
regulations also killed off the mini-trucks that were so common a couple of decades ago.
Now, it also doesn't help that the big auto manufacturers are killing off their car lines in favor of trucks and SUVs in the search for higher profits, but eventually that just means that imports will eat their market share from the bottom.
David Lang
@anon re: bridge capacity
bridges are built with a safety margin assuming every possible lane is filled with max-load big rigs. EVs are nowhere close to this density.
And as far as the original 'scary article' goes, did they do similar tests with loaded gas vehicles, or only cherry-pick the heaviest EV they could find?
yes, heavy vehicles with big tires will go over the conventional railings, it doesn't matter how they are powered.
Got a buddy with a Tesla. He got it about a year ago (on order for several years!), and he is on his second set of tires. That thing is heavy! Rides like a truck due to the weight.
The threat from EV's is exaggerated - because an EV sitting in the garage with the battery drained puts no wear on the roads. The Dimmocrats and others pushing for EV's are at the same time pushing for reliable power generation with fossil fuels to end instead of expanding, and also oppose nuclear power and expansion of the power grid. Clearly what they are aiming for is a system of remote-controlled power meters that only allows the elite to get power to charge their cars, while the elites who are heavily invested in car companies are given time to get their money out by frauding the masses with sales of EV's that they'll not be allowed to drive - leaving the masses stuck and dependent on mass transit to take them only where the government wants them to go, while the roads are open for the elites to zoom around.
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