Chevrolet Volt’s post-accident conditions under NHTSA microscope

More bad news for environment friendly vehicles as the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has taken serious notice of Chevrolet Volt’s battery stability in post-accident conditions.

The NHTSA has been persistently keeping tabs on the performance and safety of electric vehicles. In particular, the Chevy Volt has caught their eye in some road safety tests.

General Motors has been constantly defending their signature electric car but in recent tests, run by both NHTSA and GM, the car battery caught fire some time after a road safety test.

Although there has been no real time incident of such sort, the test results suggest that such incident in the future—regardless of brand or maker—might be inevitable.

GM in collaboration with NHTSA conducted a series of experiments on Volt. The car battery—comprised of sophisticated lithium-ion cells—caught fire at least one day after the incident.

According to Mary Barra, GM’s product development chief, the test results are eye-opener and GM will do its best to devise a remedy for it. The car sales however, have not been inflicted thus far.

According to a group of automotive engineers at GM, the reason for fire eruption in the batteries is because there is still charge in them even after the accident. GM, closely working with experts, have come up with a solution to the falsity in calculation.

The company has designed charge drainage technology that will be handed over to fire fighting departments, repair shops and tow-truck operator nationwide. This device or apparatus will extract any remaining charge inside the cells akin to a light bulb attached
to a ‘double A’ cell to drain out the charge.

However, there still remains a question: what will happen if the Li-ion batteries catch fire instantly?

Barra anticipated it and explained albeit vaguely: “A post-crash Volt should not initially be at risk from this condition, as the potential for an electrical fire from this condition should not exist until days after a severe crash.”

Although this latest occurrence in EV industry signals that electric powered vehicles are years away from mass adoption but its happening under GM’s roof is a good omen that this issue will be resolved satisfactorily.

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Posted by Usman Khalid on Nov 29 2011. Filed under Latest News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry