A Case Study on Crash Safety Strategies and Targets of Battery Electric VS Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles

The challenges involved in the designing of Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV) are much higher than those associated with the Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) Vehicles. In ICE vehicles, the components that may lead to fatal consequences like fire and explosions in a crash event are packaged outside the crash deformation zones. For example, the fuel tank is packaged under the rear floor in such a way that no deformation reaches this area in a rear impact crash scenario, which ultimately reduces the probability of fire or explosion substantially. However, in case of BEVs, due to the space constraints and size of the battery pack, a part of the HV Li-ion battery pack lies in the crash path, which may cause damage to these battery packs in a crash event, which may ultimately lead to fire, toxic fumes, thermal runaway, explosion, etc.This paper discusses the crash safety features and various strategies used in the design of BEVs from passive safety point of view, current battery packaging trends, current BEV targets for HV battery pack and its effect on dummy injuries. To achieve the goals of this paper, a case study is performed on Audi Q8 (ICE vehicle) and Audi E-tron (BEV). The results of this case study show that there is a great potential for improving the design of the current BEVs.