MERCEDES-BENZ WRECKS THE ELECTRIC EQA AND EQS IN THE NAME OF SAFETY - A WORLD FIRST.
With electric vehicles being quite similar to conventional petrol-powered vehicles, one would assume that if a certain car with an ICE setup scores a 5/5 in crash testing, the electric-powered version of the same car would fare just as well. We all know that things about assumptions though. While these cars can look identical from the exterior with an identical-ish interior, there are vast differences between the cars in their construction. These electric vehicles also have the problem of massive and heavy battery packs, and if you know anything about batteries it has to be that they’re volatile when damaged. They can catch fire and are notoriously hard to extinguish, and sometimes if they’re damaged in a certain way, they are susceptible to blowing up and that’s not a good thing. While electric vehicles have revolutionised performance and mileage, they’ve necessitated a new way of attending to them after they’ve been in an accident. Unlike their petrol-powered counterparts, when flames pop up you can’t simply aim a fire hose at the fire and extinguish it because water and electricity don’t mix. This means that rescue crews around the world have had to undergo new training to explore new methods of attending to EV crashes. With the amount of EVs on the roads now, you’d think that the majority have had extensive crash testing to see how the battery packs hold up. Well, they have tested them using the usual methods we’ve all seen on TV or YouTube where they fill a car with all manner of sensors and a family of crash test dummies before hurling them at a wall at various speeds. What hasn’t been done is hurling them at other EVs to see what will happen - until now.
Mercedes-Benz is now the world’s first manufacturer to publicly conduct a frontal offset crash between two electric vehicles, which means the company has gone above and beyond the legal requirements. In an amazing-looking group-owned Technology Centre for Vehicle Safety in Sindelfingen, one of the largest and most modern of its kind in the world with three flexible crash lanes leading into a large, support-free area measuring over 8,000 square metres (90 m × 90 m), and Mercedes-Benz has been testing cars there since 2016. Here the men in white coats sent an EQA and an EQS toward each other at the required 56 km/h (each) for a simulated front-end overlap head-on crash. In this 50 % overlap crash test, the occupant protection was confirmed. The passenger cell and high-voltage battery of both vehicles remained intact as intended, the doors could be opened to access the simulated occupants, and most importantly, the high-voltage systems switched off automatically. “Safety is part of Mercedes-Benz’s DNA and one of our core commitments to all road users. And to us, protecting human lives is not a question of drive system. The recent crash test involving two fully electric vehicles demonstrates this. It proves that all our vehicles have an equally high level of safety, no matter what technology drives them. We are working hard to achieve our vision of accident-free driving, which goes beyond the “Vision Zero” objectives set by the WHO and the United Nations Regional Commissions. We don’t just want zero traffic fatalities by 2050 and a halving in the number of traffic fatalities and serious injuries by 2030 compared to 2020. Our goal by 2050 is zero accidents involving a Mercedes-Benz vehicle.” said Markus Schäfer, Member of the Board of Management of Mercedes-Benz Group AG and Chief Technology Officer. “This crash test involving two electric vehicles, which we have shared publicly for the first time in this way, underlines our commitment to building the world’s safest vehicles. The four female and male dummies complied with the biomechanical limits in this extremely severe crash. This demonstrates our expertise in electric vehicle safety.” comments Prof. Dr. Paul Dick, Head of Vehicle Safety at Mercedes-Benz AG.
Take a look at the YouTube video showing the extensive testing recently carried out by the engineers at Mercedes-Benz to make sure their electric vehicle offerings are up to the task of saving occupant lives in the event of a crash. This is a world first though, no one has bothered to crash an EV into another EV yet: The world's first public two-car electric crash test by Mercedes-Benz | Mercedes-Benz
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