Volvo 660-Pound Auto Battery Crash Test

What happens when a 660-pound electric car battery hits an offset wall while traveling at 40 mph?

Without a conventional engine under the hood, and with 660 pounds of extra weight in the back and center, Volvo engineers had to rethink the way they designed the C30 Electric.

They had to add some extra reinforcement to the front end crumple zones. Which they did, before crash testing the car:

"The test produced exactly the results we expected," Jan Ivarsson, Volvo safety senior manager, said in a statement. "The C30 Electric offers the very same high safety level as a C30 with a combustion engine. The front deformed and distributed the crash energy as we expected. Both the batteries and the cables that are part of the electric system remained entirely intact after the collision."

The successful test doesn't mean Volvo is going to jump on the EV bandwagon immediately. Other car manufacturers e.g. Chevy and Nissan, have their Volt and Leaf respectively, heading into consumer hands relatively soon, but Volvo's plans for a demo fleet of it's C30, will be delayed until later in 2011.