As heavy EVs proliferate, their weight may be a drag on safety
IIHS discovers some new EVs
may be so heavy they create safety
risk for other vehicles on the road
By Raul Arbelaez
Vice President
Vehicle Research Center, IIHS
(March 10, 2023) How safe are electric vehicles? It’s a question that keeps coming up in different ways in my role overseeing our vehicle crashworthiness evaluations. When we first started testing electric vehicles in 2011, the question referred to fire risk. When damaged, lithium-ion batteries can ignite, and the fires can be extremely hard to put out. As a result, we have special procedures for EV testing, including monitoring the battery’s voltage and temperature and asking our local fire department to be on site