There is a long debate about whether electric vehicles are more prone to fires than combustion-engined cars. Statistics show that EVs burst into flames less often than those powered by engines. However, they are newer than ICE vehicles and also not as widespread. I’m yet to see a reliable apples-to-apples comparison. Anyway, that is the wrong discussion, which AXA Insurance just made even more difficult by faking an EV fire.
If you did not hear about it, this French insurance company performs crash tests every year in Switzerland. The objective seems to be educating road users about how to avoid dangerous collisions or choose safer cars. In one of these crash tests, a Model X pulled an old Model S into an artificial road island, and the vehicle’s battery pack supposedly caught fire. The problem is that it didn’t.
24auto.de discovered that the Model S had its battery pack removed and that the fire was created with pyrotechnics. In other words, it was staged. AXA Insurance tried to justify that by claiming it would be too dangerous to make the battery pack hit the road island. According to the company, it faked the situation to protect the public.
The first obvious remark about this situation is that the insurance company should have been clear about the test procedures. AXA has crash test videos on its YouTube channel from previous years, but those performed in 2022 are not there. That makes the lack of information about how the stunts were performed even worse. One way to fix that would have been to quickly elucidate what it did before or as soon as people started sharing the video. It took the 24auto.de team to have that duly clarified.
Suppose AXA Insurance had done everything right about presenting the crash test. In that case, we would need to ask the company why the hell it removed the battery pack. Electric cars will not eject their components before a collision to prevent them from catching fire. If the idea behind crash tests is to show how safe or unsafe a vehicle is, removing its components before conducting one has to be the worst idea ever.
If AXA Insurance was concerned about the safety of this procedure, it should have performed it in a protected location and filmed the outcome to show it to any audience it wanted. There is indeed a substantial risk that a battery pack will explode, throwing cells all over the place. That happened to a Model 3 that crashed in Coral Gables on September 13, 2021. The incident killed Nicholas G. Garcia, 20, and Jazmin G. Alcala, 19. His family is suing Tesla for suspension issues and because its battery pack ignited.
Removing what gives a BEV the energy it needs is such a bad idea that it will help people claim any EV fire is staged. If any crash test tries to prove a model has lousy battery pack protection, people will ask if the battery pack was installed or not. Summing up, they will use the AXA Insurance tests as a precedent. It will also raise doubts about how neutral the insurance company is. It may even make people wonder if the component was spared because it costs around $20,000.
The worst part is that AXA Insurance uses pyrotechnics to make the EV catch fire. It looks as if the company is sure that any Model S that hits a bump in the road will burn to the ground due to thermal runaway. What if Tesla developed a solution that protects the cells well enough to avoid this phenomenon? If it didn’t, why not expose that with a real crash test?
The true discussion we should have is whether it is a good call to keep putting ternary cells in electric vehicles. Mujeeb Ijaz created his company on the belief that "we should be worried about the foundation of NCM/NCA.” According to the Our Next Energy (ONE) founder, ternary cells “represent a major thermal runaway risk.” And car companies want to sell millions of cars with them. Solid-state cells and LFP batteries promise to be much safer.
Another crucial debate is whether EVs should have massive battery packs we do not use that much or if we should focus on PHEVs with smaller units, able to offer enough range for short trips and daily driving needs. With that, more PHEVs could reach the market at lower prices, which would be more effective in cutting carbon emissions.
Instead, we are now wasting time discussing if any claims about EV safety are true or false. Thank AXA Insurance and its genius idea for keeping the wrong debate running.
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