Frontal crashworthiness of battery electric and combustion engine vehicles

Recent years’ developments have brought a considerable number of battery electric vehicles (BEV) onto the road. As the engine compartment does not contain a combustion engine representing a stiff mass block, it raises the question whether the structural stiffness compared to combustion engine vehicles (CEV) has changed or not and if so, how. In accident reconstruction, the crashworthiness of CEVs of the various types has been the focus of attention for decades. However, there is no data relating to the practice of accident reconstruction that directly compares CEVs with BEVs. The frontal impact crash tests as part of the New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) allow a comparison of measurement data of CEVs and BEVs. Therefore, 32 crash tests including 16 BEVs and 16 CEVs were evaluated. The results from barrier force and acceleration data are indicating remarkable differences between the two vehicle concepts. Acceleration data can be trustworthy for representing the motion of the vehicle structure but in many cases, especially with CEVs, the acceleration data show local vibrations of the accelerometer’s surrounding structure also after data post processing. Regarding barrier force as the more reliable data source for evaluating vehicle’s frontal stiffness, it was found that in the mean CEVs are 14% stiffer than BEVs. The CEVs experienced a 12% lower crush depth than the BEVs. Vehicle linearized stiffnesses are provided section by section. This data can be helpful for the reconstruction of real traffic accidents with a force based impact model.