One of the world’s biggest makers of electric cars, Japan’s Mitsubishi, says it will not revise its safety plan in the wake of the post-crash-test fires in the Chevrolet Volt in North America.
Although the Volt is a plug-in hybrid it uses the same type of battery material – lithium-ion – as the Mitsubishi iMiev pure electric car, of which more than 10,000 have been sold worldwide.
But a senior Mitsubishi engineer says there is no need to change its current policy, which is to flood the battery with water after a crash to render it useless.
“Our battery system is more strongly covered with steel,” said Mitsuyoshi Hattori, the product manager for the company’s latest plug-in hybrid concept, the PXII MiEV, which also uses similar technology to the Volt.
“When [there is an] accident we stop the battery power using water inside the [battery pack]. We shut down at the accident stage.”
The water is not stored like a sprinkler system, rather a hose must be inserted by rescue crews into a hole made for this purpose.
“I know the GM situation,” said Hattori-san. “Firstly we have stronger covers for the battery, and after an accident we kill the battery energy by [filling the battery] with water.”
He said the Mitsubishi battery pack is rectangular in shape at the centre of the car. The Volt battery, is T-shaped, with the top of the ‘T’ closer to the sides of the car.
“We keep the space for crash safety,” he said. “We are testing many situations. It’s OK.”
Russell Roll, assistant manager product PR for Mitsubishi international markets, said: “The NHTSA came to us, we answered them in September [after the Volt incident]. There’s no plan at this time to make [another] approach from us to them [NHTSA]. We are happy with our procedures.
“The iMiev came out in 2009 and, to date, worldwide, we have no reports [of spontaneous fires after a crash].”
Another member of the Japanese PR team said: “[We’ve] never had a fire so we’re really confident with our system. No major incidents.”
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