Would A Battery Ejection System Make Electric Vehicles Safer

This year has seen some tremendous revolutions in battery technology, from advanced flexible solar panels that can fit onto headphones and backpacks to evolutions in solid-state batteries that bring them closer to affordable viability than ever before, with the help of the electronic raw material supply chain.

Because electric vehicles are reaching a critical point and have transitioned from theoretical to plausible to viable to the best possible option in just a couple of decades, solutions to some of the most pressing concerns surrounding a world full of EVs are being developed.

Rapid charging and battery swaps are both being explored as ways to make range anxiety a problem consigned to history alongside more powerful batteries more broadly, but a question remains concerning how to protect drivers if a battery caught fire and prevent thermal runaway.

By far the strangest solution that has been suggested was a compressed gas cannon that physically launches a battery away from the vehicle, which went viral and has naturally provoked reactions that have ranged from surprise to outrage to outright horror.

This particular system is likely a proof of concept that would likely never be approved for safety reasons, but why was it considered in the first place, and could it theoretically help to keep drivers safe?

Why Was The Battery Cannon Made?

It must be noted that, despite the noise that inevitably comes from social media virality, this is little more than a proof of concept, and every single company and organisation involved with the demonstration have quickly denied it would ever be used.

The test itself appears to have been arranged by the China Automotive Technology and Research Centre (CATARC), a state-owned research conglomerate of six institutions that provide testing, safety consultation and technical research and development for the automotive industry.

Allegedly, the test was undertaken by a Chinese electronics company that has denied involvement, using a Chery iCar 03, a domestic, relatively low-cost and low-specification crossover SUV by a company that has also denied any involvement in the test.

The idea is that the best way to protect a driver from a potential battery fire is to launch it away from the vehicle as soon as possible, using a collision detection system and a failsafe switch that activates when the car detects a collision.

If the battery is launched as soon as a collision is detected, then theoretically it would either stop the battery from catching fire at all or at least jettison it as far away from the impact and stop it from causing a rapidly developing fire that is difficult to manage.

What Are The Problems?

The problems with the demonstrated system are so obvious that every company allegedly involved has denied it had anything to do with it.

The problem with the system is that it is side-loaded and appears to be designed for countries where people drive on the right-hand side of the road, with the battery cannon presumably intended to be used only following collisions involving the furthest lane.

In most cases, however, the battery is going to launch indiscriminately into the path of oncoming drivers and pedestrians at what appears to be a terrifying speed. This could turn a horrible crash involving one car into a catastrophe involving several, especially if each of these has a collision system that activates.

That is, if it works at all; crashes happen in a wide variety of different ways and places, so what would happen if, for example, a car was t-boned on the side where the cannon is expected to launch?

These are questions that likely do not have answers, as the proof of concept was unlikely to ever be converted into a final product without significant modifications. Even if that was the original plan, the globally negative response has likely ended any potential plans for any similar battery ejection technology.

Could The System Have Worked?

Whilst the practicalities of this particular system were laughable, is there a potential world where a battery ejection system could make cars safer?

Ironically enough, a safer system would likely be far less powerful and be more about preventing the battery from being punctured and causing a fire rather than being fired away from the scene of an accident.

What the technology could do, however, is provide ways to make it easier for batteries to be removed if they are damaged, which could help firefighters and people on the scene to prevent a fire from getting worse, in combination with other, more realistic battery design systems that allow fires to be smothered quickly.