An interesting article about EV crash testing. Bottom line, physics still holds. You are less likely to be injured and less likely to roll over because of the increased weight and lower center of gravity. All because of batteries and their location.
Still not trading in my UAV (urban assault vehicle) any time soon.
I don’t know if you saw that Tesla which went over the cliff and all four occupants survived. All the fanbois on $TSLA Twitter went apeshite, leaving a tsunami of “Tesla, Safest Car In the World, rah, rah, rah.” Meanwhile, one of the lost printed an article giving details about that wreck being caused by dear old dad wanting to kill himself and whole family.
Buried in that article was a line, “Back in 20**, same cliff, a Teacher in a Prius went off. She survived the same fall too.” We have yet to see a Prius owner claiming “Safest cars on the road,” on any cliff dive.
Haven’t seen any sudden acceleration stories on Priuses.
Nor any sudden braking accleration stories on Priuses.
I love getting out of my wife’s Prius next to these Monster Trucks in hardware store lots. I’ve seen guys sneer at my wife’s car in traffic. Then they end up in the same store and I crawl out and they have to think, “I did not see that coming.” I love that funky car, wish it had more headroom and leg room.
A decade ago there were many such articles after a couple of Toyota crashes. A big investigation followed and most were found to be operator error. But there was one case (not Prius I think) were a floor mat jammed against the pedals.
Mike
And back in the 1980s Audis supposedly had this problem. Basically, it is caused by drivers thinking their foot is on the brake when it is actually on the gas.
In our '07 Civic, the driver side floor mat would come unhooked and slip up under the brake, accelerator area, causing problems. I pulled them both out, left them in the garage, bad setup.
I admit I do get a little chuckle when ever I pull into the local “Big Box” home center and see a Pruis/Mini Cooper/Smart Car. The juxtaposition is like ordering chicken at a steak house. But I figure to each their own, their lifestyle is different from mine, as long as it works for them.