AutoInformed thinks the emerging fresh data on electric vehicles are significant. As in 2021, the EV market continues to expand quickly. During 2022, full electric vehicles made up 22 out of 65 new models, or 34%. Specifically, five out of six Euro NCAP’s Best in Class winners were electric vehicles. Europe’s bestselling car the Tesla Model Y and new Model S both achieved Top Scores in Euro NCAP.

However, there are larger issues emerging. In an opinion piece just released this morning (9 March 2023) by Raul Arbelaez the Vice President, Vehicle Research Center at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), asked: “How safe are electric vehicles? It’s a question that keeps coming up in different ways in my role overseeing our vehicle crashworthiness evaluations.” Based upon IIHS’s 55 crash tests of EVs starting in 2011, Arbelaez outlined his current concerns, some of which are cited below. This is just the latest discussion on the expanding concerns about EV safety and their societal impact. In AutoInformed’s view these issues need to be worked on.

“Assuming the new generation of heavy EVs is designed to perform well in our crash tests, there is no reason they can’t provide good protection to their occupants. In fact, their extra weight will afford them greater protection in a multi-vehicle crash. Unfortunately, given the way these vehicles are currently designed, this increased protection comes at the expense of people in other vehicles,” Arbelaez said.

“The extra weight may also present a threat to pedestrians and bicyclists, though the danger for them is not as straightforward. The weight differential between a person and any type of passenger vehicle is already so enormous that the additional weight from an EV battery would make little difference in most cases. (Large vehicles do represent a bigger threat to pedestrians and bicyclists, but that is due mostly to their height and shape, which affect both visibility and whether a person is knocked to the ground when struck.) However, it’s not clear that all EVs have braking performance that matches their additional mass. If the extra weight leads to longer stopping distances, that will likely lead to an increase in pedestrian and cyclist deaths, which already have been on the rise in recent years,” Arbelaez said.