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IIHS Reminds Us How Crucial It Is That BEVs Lose Weight for Health Matters

More than a year ago, I wrote that the GMC Hummer EV proved that GM got electric cars wrong. The 9,000-pound beast was too heavy, too inefficient, and too fast for its own sake. This situation did not get any better, and people are still creating heavier battery packs for more range. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) warned about how concerning that trend is for traffic safety and made a relevant point about crash tests.
IIHS wants EVs to be lighter or to offer better protection to other vehicles 19 photos
Photo: Stellantis/GM/Thiruthonti/Creative Commons/edited by autoevolution
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Raul Arbelaez oversees vehicle crashworthiness evaluations as the IIHS vice president at the Vehicle Research Center. He and his team have carried out 55 crash tests with EVs, and he confessed his major concern involved fire episodes. They never happened in IIHS’s trials, but Arbelaez’s attention focused on how heavy these vehicles were.

Being heavier makes EVs safer for their occupants, but more dangerous to those in lighter vehicles and just passing by, such as bikers and pedestrians. The frontal crash tests performed by IIHS against a fixed barrier represent how the car would behave if the collision happened with another one of the same weight. If the wreck involved a lighter car, the vehicle with a higher mass would push the other one backward. That means the people in the more lightweight vehicle will be subject to higher forces.

GMC Hummer EV Edition 1 shows GM missed the point with EVs
Photo: GMC
Although it may seem that this is something that happens every day, IIHS is concerned that EVs may make it worse. Just compare how much a Model 3 weighs compared to a Camry. As I wrote in December 2022, the lowest weight for the Tesla sedan 3 (3,552 pounds, or 1,611 kilograms) is equivalent to the highest one the Toyota can have (3,572 lb, or 1,620 kg). The mass difference between the lightest versions is around 440 lb (200 kg), or two massive adults.

If that does not impress you, think about a GMC Hummer EV and an ICE truck of the same size (216.8 inches, or 5.51 meters). The closest one I found was the Jeep Gladiator (218 in, or 5.54 m). The Wrangler pickup truck has a curb weight of 4,650 lb (2,109 kg), or almost halfway to where the Hummer E tips the scale: 9,063 lb (4,103 kg). The GMC’s battery pack (2,923 lb, or 1,326 kg) represents 62.8% of the Gladiator’s mass. If a Hummer EV crashed against the Jeep pickup truck, things could turn really bad for anyone inside the Gladiator.

GMC Hummer EV is worthy of its name
Photo: GMC
This is why Arbelaez called for two different solutions, perhaps even both of them combined. The first is for automakers to conceive EVs in a different way, seizing their overhangs to make improved crash structures. They should try to minimize not only the forces people inside the vehicles could experience, but also anyone or anything that is hit by these cars.

Tesla seems to be going in the opposite direction with the Cybertruck. The company has repeatedly said that its electric pickup truck will use the same steel that the Starship adopts. That would make the exoskeleton bulletproof, which is a pretty serious allegation in many aspects. However, let me stick to the one that matters here: steel that resists shots may not absorb energy the same way a more flexible material would. In fact, it may transfer all the forces produced in an impact to the other vehicles involved and all occupants, with deadly consequences.

Tesla Cybertruck Prototype Reveals Massive Windshield Wiper
Photo: Chile AI100
This is what the people who still praise old vehicles and say they had real steel fail to understand. A car that deforms where it does not matter and remains intact where it does uses steel and crash boxes as metal airbags. The idea is that the deformation helps to neutralize the impact energy. IIHS demonstrated that by crashing a 2009 Chevrolet Malibu against a 1959 Chevrolet Bel Air. The video is still worth watching, and I invite you to do so below. Hopefully, Tesla still has time to think it over and give the production Cybertruck a more friendly shell. That is exactly what Arbelaez wants automakers to think about.

His second request is to have smaller battery packs, something that would help reduce weight. The penalty will be shorter ranges, something most people are not willing to accept. In fact, the longer the range an EV offers, the more appeal it has with customers. As much as EV advocates think it is ok to wait 20 minutes or more for a fast charge, people just want to have a similar experience to that of filling a fuel tank, which generally demands less than five minutes.

Arbelaez hopes that battery technology evolves to the point that we can have longer ranges in smaller battery packs. That’s what lithium metal companies and solid-state battery startups keep promising for 2025 or even 2024, which is not that far. While that does not happen, it would be wise to listen to the man and consider that heavy vehicles that can accelerate as fast as EVs deserve to be developed in ways that protect people – inside them or from them.

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About the author: Gustavo Henrique Ruffo
Gustavo Henrique Ruffo profile photo

Motoring writer since 1998, Gustavo wants to write relevant stories about cars and their shift to a sustainable future.
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