![]() ![]() Another factor that’s not often talked about is the availability of technicians qualified to work on electric cars, as these are far lower in number than those who can repair regular cars, which also pushes costs up. Electric cars have fewer moving parts than conventional cars, meaning there’s less to go wrong, but some of the components they do have – the lithium-ion batteries being case-in-point – are enormously expensive to repair or replace if they do become damaged. There are a couple of reasons for this, the most influential being the cost of repair. In actual fact, they’re usually a little bit more expensive to insure than a comparable petrol or diesel car. In fact, research suggests that EVs are actually less likely to catch fire than conventional cars as they don’t carry flammable petrol or diesel. Some worry about the risk of fire that the lithium-ion batteries used in EVs carry after all, there have been well-documented cases of such batteries catching fire in phones and laptops, so what’s to stop it happening in a car? Well, manufacturers use a wide range of measures to prevent this happening, including super-strong steel casings to prevent damage, separation of cells to prevent fire spreading, and a whole host of fuses, circuit breakers and cooling systems. Look at the Euro NCAP website, and you’ll notice that all dedicated EVs tested (with the exception of the Chinese-manufactured Aiways U5) score the full five-star rating. This is because an EV’s big, heavy battery pack is normally incorporated into the central structure of the car, usually in the floor, and this provides extra stiffness to the car’s bodyshell, meaning better protection of the passenger compartment in a crash. After all, any object so big and heavy travelling at speed is always going to carry risks of potential injury for anyone – or anything – it hits.įor those inside the car, however, it’s thought that EVs are actually safer than their conventionally powered counterparts.
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