New Chinese EV standards expected to be released in 2014

The China Automotive Engineering Research Institute anticipates that new national standards for electric vehicles will be ready within two years, stdaily.com reported earlier this week. Currently, the institute is working on developing independent crash test standards for EVs, which will cover side and rear collisions as well as head-on crashes.

According to Zhou Rong, chief engineer of the China Auto Standardization Research Institution, EV safety standards cover four key areas: the danger of combustion of electric batteries, high levels of electrical current that may cause bodily harm, the relatively heavy weight of EVs which may be extremely dangerous in the event of a crash, and the effect of radiation from electric batteries, the levels of which are much higher than mobile phones.

Crash testing research work for EVs is being done in pace with guidelines set by the International Organization for Standardization and other influential organizations. Worth noting is that China is the first country to have outlined safety standards for fuel battery-powered vehicles, having greatly influenced several international standards.

EV standards in China are currently very rudimentary and limited in scope. Furthermore, test crash data is limited to head-on collisions. In order to tackle the issue, the China Automotive Technology and Research Center has done a considerable amount of crash testing work, with dozens of EVs having been inspected. The collected data will be used for developing the new standards.