50 percent higher risk of an accident in an electric car
Domestic

30 August 2022

kl. 08.15

According to a report from a Swiss insurance company, the chance of an accident is 50 percent higher if you travel in an electric car. This has been arrived at after, among other things, having carried out own tests.

It is the Swiss insurance company Axa that has reviewed statistics for collisions with electric cars and carried out its own crash tests with Tesla cars. The result, which the site Carup draws attention to, is that electric cars cause 50 percent more accidents compared to combustion cars.

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The reason for the greater vulnerability of the electric cars is that the drivers cannot cope with the jerky acceleration.

- Most electric cars, especially the powerful ones, have a very high torque, which is immediately noticeable when you press the gas pedal. This can therefore lead to unwanted, jerky acceleration, which the driver can no longer control, says Michael Pfäffli, head of accident research at AXA Switzerland.

Undercarriage weak point
And once the accident is a fact, there is a weak point that can cause a battery fire - according to Axa, the undercarriage can be damaged in the event of a collision.

- If the battery is damaged, it can quickly lead to huge fires. If there is only a risk of the battery catching fire, the vehicle must be kept in an extinguishing container for days. That we all still have some work to do is evident, for example, from the fact that there are not that many extinguishing containers yet and some of these cars have to be stored in locked parking lots, says Nils Reich, director at Axa.

READ ALSO: Chaos at the country's charging stations - electric car owners have to wait for hours

As a consequence of the finding, Axa now wants Euro Ncap to crash test electric cars from below.

- The chassis seems to be the Achilles heel of electric cars because the battery is not protected there. The drivers should be aware of this, says Michael Pfäffli.