The battery pack of an Audi e-tron is seen being ejected from the electric SUV in a crash caught on video in British Columbia this week.
Electric vehicles are starting to become the highest safety-rated vehicles tested by agencies around the world as automakers are starting to understand how to take advantage of things like their lower center of gravity enabled by the battery pack.
But there’s still a lot to learn about the safety of electric vehicles, and this new accident in British Columbia this week is highlighting that.
A Toyota sedan collided with an Audi e-tron electric SUV at an intersection in Richmond, British Columbia, on Tuesday.
Cpl. Dennis Hwang, Richmond RCMP spokesperson, told Richmond News that the battery pack of the electric vehicle “ejected” on impact:
The battery pack of the Audi, an EV, was ejected from the vehicle and combusted.
Normally, we would have doubts about such a statement, but there’s a video of the accident where you can clearly see the SUV spinning from the impact and the battery flying in the other direction:
Other images, like the one featured above, also show the battery a few meters away from the crashed Audi.
Fortunately, the Audi driver, a 31-year-old man, was not seriously injured in the crash and the 49-year-old Toyota driver was sent to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
Hwang added that they had to close the street for safety reasons due to concerns with the vehicles having knocked down a power line and the Audi’s battery pack catching on fire.
The police spokesperson added:
The safety of our community during the entire incident remained at the forefront. To our knowledge, this is the first such instance of an EV battery pack being ejected post collision.
Audi has yet to comment on the accident. We will update the article if the automaker chooses to comment.
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