BYD is a large Chinese automaker, a company that wants to begin importing their electric cars to the United States, and the company that manufactured an electric taxi that was struck from behind, exploded, and burned to the ground killing everyone inside over the weekend. Other than the violent explosion that occurred at a GM lab a couple of months ago, we do not know of any of accidents of this magnitude involving an electric vehicle. The vehicle, shown in the lead photo and below is called an e6 and is a popular taxi in some Chinese cities. BYD took the interesting step to conclude that any vehicle, gas or electric would have suffered the same fate (apparently they felt the same about the occupants) after being struck at a high rate of speed by another car. In a release, BYD said (with respect to the crash), “Maybe a tank, maybe a truck could survive it.” The other car involved, a Nissan GT-R, which hit the BYD from behind while going almost double the speed seemed to have fared OK and the occupants apparently lived.
A couple of interesting things have been reported about this wreck. The first is that according to the NY Times local “propaganda” officials got in contact quickly with the media in the province where the wreck happened and instructed them to pretty much leave out the fact that an electric car was involved and a bunch of people died violent deaths. Secondly, the man driving the GT-R ditched the scene but then turned himself in hours later. Police officials think that the man who came to turn himself in may have been hired by the guy actually driving the car to take the fall because he showed no obvious signs of injury from a crash. The other possibility is that he wasn’t driving a half assed shabbily built car that folded up like a wet cardboard box. It could cut either way, right?
BYD has been hot on the idea of importing their electric cars into the USA because they could be sold at a fraction of the price of a Prius, Volt, Leaf, or other ‘lectric car built on these or Euro/Japanese shores. This wreck and fire highlights some of the risks that come along with having all of that electricity and volatile battery power on board. It was not long ago that the Chevy Volt experienced a fire after crash testing and existing models were retrofitted with a steel plate to reinforce one area of the chassis to help better protect the batteries.
The fact that this news escaped China is an incredible testament to the power of the internet. In years past, none of this would have been brought to light and the world wouldn’t have known a thing. We’re now very interested in BYD’s importation efforts and how thoroughly these cars will be tested if they ever head for our shores. Now that the Chinese propaganda officials are on the scene, any fresh info on this disaster has probably dried up.
Link: New York Times – BYD Releases details about fatal crash
Wall Street Journal – BYD investigates electric car fire and fatalities
All this talk about how “explosive” batteries are, and yet completely ignore how many “gas” vehicles catch on fire every year, new, old, wrecked, or in the case of Jeep and Ford just because.
Is that a GTR in the crash? Shame..
Respected car companies cant sell electric cars except to those greenie dweeb sheep in Hollywood. How does a Chinese car company with no history in the states think they can do it? Not to mention, vwry few people.think the Chinese could build a quality product if their lives depended on it.
In fairness to BYD – the claim they made in the Times article is pretty plausible. They say the car was trundling along at around 50 mph, got rear-ended by the GTR going over 110 mph, spun around, and hit a tree straight in the middle of the rear bumper. The E6 is a hatchback with a short tail, sort of like a Ford Focus. So, you’ve got the rear end first smashed by a collision with a car at a 60 mph closing speed, then a second collision with a substantial tree at 50-60 mph. If you were using just about any small hatchback sold here and had a crash like that, anyone in the rear seat is going to be seriously boned.
About the only sort of car where someone in the rear seat wouldn’t at least seriously be hurt in an impact like that would be a large sedan like Buford T. Justice, or, as BYD noted, a truck. Unless BYD has bribed the cops to come up with a fake report, I’d agree with their conclusion here.
Heck, just rebadge it as a Chevy Volt and no one will know the difference…
Piece of shit, I hope this gets out all over the world,those sneaky bastards couldnt care less.
Will someone please unleash the EPA on these Chinese safety-savants?
And while we’re at it…. the FDA… and aww, hell, send in the Teamsters too.
Shit, send the Kardashians too. Maybe they’ll disappear like the GTR driver. Hopefully.
The FDA is such a huge joke. We’re getting saturated with Chinese honey they just launder through Canada but because they’re such a huge, inefficient sloth they haven’t done anything about it. As far as drugs go, they’re absolutely worthless since companies can just change one thing and have basically the same product back on shelves in a month while the FDA takes ages to evaluate it again.
Reminds me of the Pinto.
The explosion at the GM Tech Center didn’t involve an electric car. It was the accidental ignition of the out-gassing from an experimental battery that was undergoing a test that was intended to push it past it’s limits. It worked. Some injuries occurred, and the building was badly damaged, but the battery actually remained intact after the explosion.
http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120411/AUTO0103/204110389/Prototype-battery-blamed-explosion-GM-s-Tech-Center?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE
Maybe we should build sub par exploding things and import them to China.
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