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Electric Vehicles May Be Too Heavy For U.S. Roadway Guardrails And Barriers, Research Finds: Video

It’s hard to deny that electric vehicles have several benefits over their ICE-powered counterparts, including a quieter ride, instant torque, zero emissions, and tax incentives. However, one of the biggest downsides currently hindering EVs is weight, as battery packs aren’t particularly light. While this drawback has generally been accepted throughout the automotive industry, it seems as though this added weight may actually be problematic.

According to a report from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, a test was recently conducted to determine if U.S. roadway guardrails and military protection measures were sufficient in stopping an EV’s progress in the event of a run-off-road crash. With a Rivian RT1 pickup – which weighs more than 7,000 pounds – traveling at 60 mph, it was found that a U.S. roadway guardrail did little to slow down the all-electric truck.

Photo of electric vehicles crash testing.

“There is some urgency to address this issue,” Midwest Roadside Safety Facility Assistant Director Cody Stolle was quoted as saying. “As the percentage of EVs on the road increases, the proportion of run-off-road crashes involving EVs will increase, as well. It is going to be necessary to re-examine the designs of roadside barriers even beyond the EVs. It’s a critical and timely need.”

It’s worth noting that additional tests are currently in the works.

“The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ mission is to deliver vital engineering solutions, in collaboration with our partners, to secure our nation, energize our economy and reduce disaster risk,” U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center Research Civil Engineer Genevieve Pezzola stated. “It is critical to conduct these EV baseline comparison tests to understand any potential risks to our nation. This work is the first necessary step toward ensuring that our nation’s protection measures, such as roadside barrier systems and barriers to protect against hostile vehicles, are adapting to accommodate for the changing composition of the vehicle fleet.”

Of course, the GMC Hummer EV Pickup can weigh a little over 9,000 pounds, or roughly 2,000 pounds more than the Rivian R1T used in the crash test above. As such, the additional tests detailed above may determine the route electric vehicles take in the future in regards to safety.

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Comments

  1. Yeah, and now the public is scared to death of being T-boned by one of these obnoxious behemoths. I feel legislation coming…

    Reply
    1. …AND Litigation

      Reply
  2. I call BS, yes they are heavy but they don’t weigh any more than the trucks and other commercial vehicles that we currently share the roadways with.

    Reply
    1. Not all roadways are built for trucks and other heavy vehicles, they are built for the anticipated traffic loads.

      Reply
      1. Think about that, a loaded Amazon or UPS delivery truck weighs as much or more that these EV’s. In fact my Silverado returning from Home Depot with building supplies can outweigh most EV’s. It sounds like the government looking for a program to spend money on. Every farm tractor and combine that drives down my country road outweighs those EV’s many times over. No worries here.

        Reply
        1. A loaded UPS truck does not have 0-60 times of 4 seconds and does not fly down the highway at 80mph.

          Reply
          1. What does the 0-60 time have to do with guardrails?

            Funny how you complain the Trax only has a 1.2l engine and it’s not fast enough but now you’re complaining EVs are too quick.

            It seems you just like to troll and complain about everything GM does.

            Reply
            1. Agree 100%!

              Reply
              1. Good for you ….

                Reply
            2. I never once complained about the Trax or any other gm vehicle’s lack acceleration on this or any other forum. Get your facts strait before attacking.

              Reply
          2. I’m not scared.

            Reply
            1. Good for you.

              Reply
  3. So what weight can these barriers contain? They fail to mention that. If 7000 lbs is too much, stay clear of any 1/2 ton towing anything larger than a small utility trailer.

    Reply
    1. True, but what’s the ratio of traffic without trailers to traffic with trailers? 100:1 or more… point being there’s a lot more non-trailer traffic than there are people hauling stuff. Not to mention the fact that you really can’t tow far with electric because the batteries aren’t currently capable of sustaining trailered loads for very far. I’d say if you’re driving a smaller economy car, you want to stay clear of EVs, especially those that are semi-autonomously driving themselves…

      Reply
  4. Nothing is going to stop heavy. Nothing. Consider the emergency brake ramps on interstates for trucks at the bottom of hills. Basically a hill up to counter the momentum the truck gained going down a hill.

    Reply
    1. Hey Einstein, the ramps are there for braking loss not the weight of the vehicle.

      Reply
  5. When you follow the science the challenges just keep piling up. Too bad democrats for all their projecting they do don’t seem to follow the science themselves and insist we all drop everything and go electric.

    Reply
    1. Such a shame you could not stick to the science. You were doing good, then all credibility was lost when you veered out of your lane and crashed.

      Reply
      1. but you agree he’s correct, you just don’t like his comments about Democrats…

        Reply
      2. When you have nothing informative to respond with (like facts debating the weight of EVs) and have to resort to pathetic responses just because I call out the actions of a certain political party you seem to favor the credibility was lost with you before you finished typing your response.

        Reply
  6. Not an EV thing. And bad testing.

    They rammed the guardrail nearly head on, they are designed for more parallel glancing blows and up to 5,000lb vehicles.

    Lots of ICE SUV and trucks that exceed that.

    Reply
    1. What is considered “lots” and what models are they? Comparable ICE trucks are 1,000 lbs less.

      Reply
  7. Luckily, big diesel trucks and 18 wheelers weigh less than 7,000 pounds, so if we just ban electric trucks, then there will be no damage to the guard rails. /sarcasm

    Reply
  8. A proper test would have had an F150 or Silverado configured with similar capabilities as the Rivian do the same test and see the results.

    Reply
    1. Both are around 2000lbs lighter. Batteries are heavy. The Hummer, and EV versions of the silverado/f150 are heavy too. I repeat, batteries are heavy. People with EV’s and a heavy foot are discovering tires wear faster with heavy loads and high torque. I see many late model tesla’s getting tires way sooner than a less torquey ICE vehicle.

      Reply
      1. An ICE F-250 weighs 5,697 to 7,660 lbs vs the 7k lb Rivian, I bet the F-250 would be worse with its higher center of gravity. Silverado HD weighs 6,203 to 7,578 lbs – keep in mind there are way more of these heavy ICE trucks on the road than 7k lb Rivians, 9k HUMMER/Silverado EVs, or the lighter 6603 – 6843 lb CT.

        Reply
        1. Thank you, my exact points. This is a non- issue.

          Reply
  9. Science, what science, the politicians in office are too dumb to look into the science, they just want to shove EVsdown our throats.

    Reply
    1. dee da dee. Tommy- please explain the science, p l e a s e ?

      Reply
  10. Some people here have brought up a more poignant feature. We have crash tests and expect collisions between vehicles in the 4,000 pound and under range. The energy stored in any object at speed becomes a very dangerous projectile, the smaller the vehicle , the more dangerous. A large semi or truck towing a trailer has the weight spread out and more crush capability. A smaller heavier object is like a comet, heavy, small, massive stored energy.
    I am not against EV’s at all, they are awesome, like the new Corvette Eray. but batteries need to come way down in weight. Imagine a battery that weighs very little, but has enormous energy. Like packing pure electrons in a lunch box. Those of you that know physics or basic energy will get this. In the meantime, go buy a new Corvette ICE and enjoy. You will never regret it.

    Reply
    1. 100% correct, thanks for your reply!!

      Reply
    2. Every EMPTY Silverado on the road weighs more than 4000 pounds.

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      1. so do the smallest EVs, so what’s your point? And the larger they get, the heavier they get. The point of the story is that the current highway infrastructure was not designed for EVs. Not the guardrails, not the crash barriers, and definitely not the placement of charging stations. Nothing about forcing EVs on a buying public that generally doesn’t want them was planned well, it’s all just a lot of pandering and money wasting that’s costing the taxpayers a huge amount of money for no real gain in anything.

        Reply
    3. Good thing there are very few Comets still on the roads. LOL!

      Reply
  11. “I said ‘Pig-Pen this here’s the Rubber Duck and we ain’t gonna pay no toll!’ So we crashed the gate doin’ 98 and said ‘Let them truckers roll 10-4!’”

    -C.W. McCall
    from the song “Convoy”

    Reply
    1. Had memorized as a kid even had the 45 record. Do you remember the movie Convoy with Kris Kristopherson? Saw is recently on late TV brought back fun memories.

      Reply
  12. Sounds like a “Study” done by people selling guard rails.

    Reply
  13. EV’s and guard rails are a non story. Like 99.9 percent of what the government spends on studies, this is just more BS drummed up to get a Federal grant, paid for with our tax dollars, for another useless study.

    The far bigger problem being caused by the weight of EV’s is the wear put on roads and bridges by the heavier EV’s, yet they pay no in gas taxes to maintain those roads. I know some states charge a nominal fee, usually in the range of $50-$100 a year, but the average ICE vehicle, that drives 12000 miles pays $200-$250 a year (depending on the state) in state gas taxes. And that doesn’t take into account the Federal gas taxes they also avoid paying.

    Reply
    1. Unless you’re getting about 8 MPG, no way are you paying $250.00 a year driving 12K a year. Also, almost every State is charging registration fees much higher than what would be spent paying the gasoline tax to drive 12K miles

      Reply
  14. The old joke around here with our old Fords was to load until the step bumper dragged then throw some off and go. A bit of an exaggeration but we watched the rear overloads and loaded until they were flat then stopped before they bowed down as long as you had 10 ply’s on the rear. It was really hard to hurt those trucks. Those were the days.

    Reply
  15. Ev s are old bricks for twits ,bring on the hydrogen

    Reply
  16. Just stop this Joe (Weekend at Bernie’s) Biden crap about electric vehicles. They are bad all around. environment, roads, and communities where the metals come from. The only people making out on all of this is China.. does Biden and the Democrats get a payoff for this, or do they just hate the US????

    Mary gets 9.5 million a year. Fire her and take away retirement benefits…

    Reply

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