Mercedes claimed a first place, which raises the question – why now?
At a time when the entire automotive industry is dealing with nothing but the transition to electricity, she made, in her words, a pioneering experiment and pitted two electric cars against each other in a “crash test”. In the simulation, two of his SUVs ran into each other, the EQA models and the flagship EQS SUV.
In what other ways was the crash test unconventional
Mercedes completes normal crash tests three times a day, so a total of 900 are done per year. In fact, the European association Euro NCAP and the American NHTSA do not even require collisions of real vehicles. Instead of one of them, a 1,400 kg cart with an aluminum barrier is enough to be sent against the test car at a speed of 50 kilometers per hour, and even that is enough to award the required stars.
In the first crash test of two electric cars, the EQA model weighing about 2.2 tons, and the EQS SUV weighing even more than three tons went against each other. And they collided at a speed of 56 kilometers per hour, so that each of them lost more than 50 percent of the frontal surface during the collision.
According to Mercedes data, such a case is a very common scenario of a traffic accident, when the driver does not estimate the distance when overtaking and hits the oncoming vehicle in such a way that it is a half or more overlap.
The head of the safety test department at the German car manufacturer placed a total of four mannequins, three women and one man, in both electric cars. Each of them had 150 sensors on them.
How electric cars passed the safety test
The results of the crash test analysis showed that the models presented only a very low risk of serious, even fatal, injury. The airbags and seat belt pretensioners worked as they should, and the car doors could still be opened after the impact, so the so-called “safety cell” handled the accident properly.
In order to reduce the likelihood of the high voltage system igniting after impact, the power sources of both electric cars were automatically disconnected. In addition, according to Mercedes, the batteries were protected by their frame and reinforced cables.
With the help of this high standard of passive safety, also presented in the video montage at the beginning of this article, the German car manufacturer wants to prove that it will achieve zero accidents by 2050 as part of the so-called “Vision Zero”.
The representatives of the department already describe more in the introductory video.
2023-10-18 14:34:41
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