As a new technology, electric vehicles are still quite unfamiliar to most people. At the same time, their emergence has garnered significant attention. Rumors circulating that electric vehicles are unsafe have deterred many potential buyers. Before embracing new energy vehicles, people are placing higher demands on vehicle safety. Is it true that electric vehicles are less safe than gasoline-powered vehicles?
Vehicle safety remains a crucial topic regardless of the type of vehicle. As for electric vehicles, current technology still falls short of achieving the same high level of safety as gasoline-powered vehicles. Many automakers advertise that pure electric vehicles are extremely safe, and from one perspective, this is certainly true. However, considering the inherent risks of collisions, water ingress, and high temperatures, the safety of electric vehicles is still significantly compromised.
The chemical characteristics of power batteries significantly reduce the safety performance of pure electric vehicles compared to traditional gasoline vehicles. News reports show that once an electric vehicle is involved in a collision and catches fire, the fire can spread rapidly. For example, ternary lithium batteries are extremely vulnerable to impacts and punctures. When a ternary lithium battery is struck by a sharp object, the positive and negative electrodes inside the battery can connect, causing a short circuit and resulting in a high-power discharge. The leaked electrolyte, upon contact with the heat generated by this high-power discharge, can explode and ignite. Gasoline vehicles do not have this problem. They are not constrained by batteries and do not require special handling. Furthermore, gasoline vehicles, with their century-long history of development, have their own safety systems and solutions.
In short, the overall safety of electric vehicles is certainly not as good as that of gasoline vehicles at present, due to technological and hardware limitations, but this does not mean that the safety of electric vehicles will never catch up with that of gasoline vehicles.
