Crashed Electric Vehicle Handling and Recommendations—State of the Art in Germany

Abstract

In the near future, electric powered vehicles will represent a major part of the road traffic. Accordingly, there will be a natural increase of accidents involving electric vehicles. There are not many cases of such accidents yet and therefore the experience and correct handling are still partially open points for the involved parties, such as the rescue services for example. The aim of this work is to provide a complete overview of the accident handling sequence in Germany, starting with the damaged vehicle on site and moving on to the risks and challenges for the stakeholders, such as transport and recycling companies. Arising from the developed overview, a handling recommendation for yet undiscussed points is given. Especially, different extinguishing and deactivation methods are compared and discussed. Due to a lack of a common live-feed from battery data on site, other criteria have to be taken into account to assess the state of the battery. The wrecked vehicle—including the high voltage system—needs to be in a definite safe state at the handover to a towing service. Depending on the case, different options for securing the vehicle will be considered in this work.

End of Electric Vehicle Batteries: Reuse vs. Recycle

“…The need for such steps is, for example, if the EV had a major accident and the battery is leaking, then there would be no sense in carrying out any further testing as it will be obvious that such battery would be non-reliable and possibly unsafe to reuse i.e., it should be taken directly for recycling safely. To ease the transport of such batteries, if possible, it is beneficial to not only remove the battery from the EV but also the battery components should be dismantled onsite or at some possible quarantine area [22], so that this would be safe and not require a specific type of transport i.e., a vehicle having features for transporting batteries within a specific battery container, as per the Agreement Concerning the International Carriage of Dangerous Goods by Road (ADR) rules. Such onsite dismantled batteries can be only recycled at the recycling facility.…”

“…The particularity of battery reuse is that the availability of second-life batteries does not depend on the investment of the repurposing manufacturer, in contrast to new raw material factories, where one can invest more to increase the extraction rates. For battery reuse, the availability of batteries depends basically on the rate of EV retirement, knowing that retirement might come from ageing or from an accident, in which case the safety procedures are quite relevant [22] and not all batteries will be accepted for reuse.…”

“…This is followed by a mechanical and a hydrometallurgical process, with a recycle quota of 72% for the mechanical process and up to 91% for the total process respectively [36]. A noteworthy advantage is that the mechanical separation can also be performed at a given location with a portable container solution, leading to the separation of different components already at the site, such as at a recycling company, a quarantine area for wrecked EVs or from a repair garage [22]. Hence, this concept does not require additional effort and battery container equipment for the transportation of these batteries as transport of dangerous goods, leading to a reduction in transported volume by a factor of seven [36].…”

Polymer Electrolytes for Al-Air Batteries: Current State and Future Perspectives

“…2 In fact, specific recommendations are required to manage electric vehicles during or after car accidents. 3 In the ever-increasing demand for safe and high-performance energy storage technology, the development of new metal−air batteries is assumed to have considerable importance. 4−11 The typical design of a metal−air battery includes a metal anode (e.g., Li, Zn, Al, Mg, etc.…”

High-Capacity Cells and Batteries for Electric Vehicles

“…However, how the security of these vehicles in an accident should be handled is not yet so clear, and, nowadays, the fear of electrocution or the impossibility to extinguish any fire coming from the batteries are issues to study. This is the field analyzed in the second article, lead by Wöhrl et al [2], in their review on Crashed Electric Vehicle Handling and Recommendations-State of the Art in Germany.…”