Reva Electric Car Crash Test

kaBOOMn

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jun 29, 2006
Messages
849
Location
Adelaide, South Australia
I don't know if this has been posted before, if it has sorry!

Regarding the large number of upset people in the British media over the recently published crash tests of the Reva electric car, its quite funny the amount of miss information going on.

First heres a few links:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article1764088.ece

http://www.autobloggreen.com/2007/05/10/moderate-speed-crash-in-indian-ev-likely-to-be-fatal/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/05/10/ngwiz10.xml

And a video!

[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcmoyScWcy0[/YOUTUBE]

Now I personally know a engineer who is involved in all this and I'm quite interested int he topic myself, more along the lines however of a light weight, low volume car testing......so I'm writing a letter:

Sorry to upset the Apple cart.... and all the green conspiracy nuts, here are the facts:

Regarding the G-Wiz, the Australian government on recommendation of the South Australian department of Transport initiated this current round of crash testing. Quite interesting since the British media seem to state that the British department of transport did this on its own initiative or the imitative of individuals opposed to the electric car.

The proprietor of a local business here, the solar shop, has been trying to get the G-Wiz complied here in South Australia for quite a while. Every times he's gone to a state authority for registration he has been turned down under the rules of crash testing and compliance. Fair enough. This gentleman?s latest effort was to convince the Western Australian department of transport, in which he was turned down again.

Since there was a lack of G-Wiz's in Australia and a lack of available facilities for crash testing, the test was outsourced to the British government (NCAP crash testers? Please correct me if I?m wrong). The British stated from the outset that they expected the G-Wiz to fail: To such an extent that they made the Australians pay for the dummies since they didn't expect there to be much left.

Another one of the issues is if it was to be registered here; it would require all occupants to wear a helmet. Something that the local importer is taking great pains to avoid.

As it turned out, the crash results of the G-Wiz where considerably worse than anybody could have anticipated. There are moves in Australia to ban the G-Wiz permanently.

The argument that a G-Wiz will only do 70 odd km/h (45 mp/h?) is irreverent since what happens when two G-Wiz's hit each other head on? Or another vehicle? The argument that in London the average speed of a vehicle only 10 mp/h is quite misleading since there are times when the traffic is moving faster than this. Also another point that hasn?t been taken into account is the kinetic energy involved in a accident: A bus hitting a G-Wiz at 20mp/h is going to cause considerably more damage than say a Nissan Micra hitting it at 20 mp/h. To people who don?t understand, kinetic energy is a function of the mass of an object (say a vehicle) verses its velocity (speed).

Just as a interesting side point, I wonder what increase in fuel efficiency (due to less weight) you would get with normal cars if you stripped all the safety features out of them, for example collapsible steering columns, side intrusion bars etc. If any of you have been involved in producing low volume cars from scratch you would appreciate how much weigh, complexity and cost this adds. Now I believe the low volume rules in England/The EU are different, but in Australia we have to comply with all of this. Which is really not a problem if you?re clever. You can make a sub 600kg comply.

I think one of the attractive features about the G-Wiz is its low cost and good performance, and there has to be reason for that: No safety features. Also for people to say they are willing to make this trade-off to be Eco friendly, I respect that this is your decision, however what if you have a passenger in your car or worse a child? Maybe this is getting to the bud of the problem why people want big SUVs!

Say if the G-Wiz was made safe and there was a 50% in price would people still be willing to purchase it? Also of note, Ford had a electric car like the Reva, they purchased a small Norwegian company Th!nk several years ago, I?m not sure how that would be in a crash test, but with the engineering power and expertise of Ford behind them I believe they would have made it safe. There are images of one of these Th!nk cars in a crash test on their website, but no published results, However simply looking at the pictures it seems to me that the Th!nk is a much better electric vehicle to have a crash in.

Simply stating that electric cars, including the G-Wiz should be exempt from these rules is a double standard. I would expect in an overly politically correct society like England you?d understand this. The claim that there have been ?20 million miles? with out a death is a strange one, is this a world wide claim or just in England? It was stated in the Times that there are only 700 odd Reva?s in England I find it quite unlikely that they have covered that distance.

Now we move into the issue of the so called ?carbon footprint? of the Reva. While this is not my area of expertise, people do have to realise the fundamental relationship between the speed of charge of a battery and the amount of electrical energy used. For example if you charge a battery up quickly to full charge you are going to require more energy to do it. Just ask any electrical engineer. The claimed ?plug it in overnight? is an interesting concept, since I wonder how much more efficient the Reva would be environmentally if the range was halved and the charge time doubled? This claim that the Reva is 100% efficient is just plain wrong. People need to also remember that electricity needs to be generated somewhere?. guess how?

Maybe Reva is terrified of these results and is attempting to quash this argument before another company with a competing product that does the same thing, but passes the crash test, steamrollers them? Maybe this whole argument is not about the evironment or safely but pure and simple market forces? Another point is that numerous celebrities and politicians have used Reva?s to show off their so-called ?Green credentials? and they may loose quite a bit of face if the Reva is banned? maybe they will then start walking?

Sorry but I think you need some strait talking Australians to sort this out for you!

Edit: I still need to edit it, fix grammer and spelling etc etc

I'm thinking of sending it to a few media people in the UK includeing Mr Clarkson. Anybody have anything to add?
 
Last edited:

I tipped 'em off about that ^__^

Essentially, the Reva (or the G-Wiz as it's known over here) is desperately unsafe, and this is the problem. Even in London, 30mph head-on collisions happen far too often, which is what a 40mph into-a-wall test replicates.

And it's not just one crash test, it's two : Top Gear did one, and the government did one. The government one hasn't released all it's findings, but was moved to rush out a statement due to how bad things were. The Top Gear one is in the youtube video and in the most recent magazine.

The simple fact is those things aren't the slightest bit safe. If you think the front head-on collision was bad, there are 2 rear seats right up against the glass...I wouldn't want to be rear-ended in one. Or, worse, have my kids rear ended in one.

The seller - GoinGreen - has used the argument "well, we've not had an accident yet...". That's not an argument at all. That's like saying, "I once stuck my head out a train window and didn't get decapitated, so everyone should travel with their head out the window". And since it looks like a car, and - for all I know - drives like a car, I can see why the buyer might expect some kind of minimum safety level that every other car on the road today has.

Yes, electric cars are all well and good. But if your electric car kills you as soon as you scrape against something...
 
Last edited:
What is really a laugh is that the executive says "they don't go that fast so its safe". Never mind the other cars flying by you at a high rate of speed.
 
Holy balls, is that car made of cardboard? Maybe they'll upgrade the safety and use corrugated.
 
A good reason to buy diesels, not Reva/G-Wiz/Greenys... (Greeny being the US name). Not to mention that the spokespersons argument smacks of corporate logic (meaning: anything to defend it and the money flow) "It only averages 10 mph." Right, what about the other car and buses travelling at 20-30 mph? That's the same as running head-on into a brick wall at 30-40 mph.
 
"It only averages 10 mph." Right, what about the other car and buses travelling at 20-30 mph? That's the same as running head-on into a brick wall at 30-40 mph.

My thought exactly. Just cause you're car is only traveling 10mph, doesn't mean the one in the opposite lane is doing the same. Besides he said AVERAGE speed. AVERAGE. That includes all the time people spend starting their cars in the morning and let it sit to warm up (prolly takes a GWhiz 30 minutes to warm up), all the time wasted sitting at 0mph in traffic, and the time spent parking. My car as a computer those shows average speeed. I normally travel 70mph on the highway, and do mostly highway driving, and my average is always in the 30s due to the above factors.

Oh, and... "Quadrocycles"? Please.
 
starting their cars in the morning and let it sit to warm up (prolly takes a GWhiz 30 minutes to warm up)
Tell us more about this please :lol:
The only thing which probably would need warming up is batteries, although you'd spend half the charge doing so.
 
Last edited:
Fuck the G-Wiz. Take that Kristen Scott Thomas!
 
I think they should have a test where one of these hits a Prius.
 
The funniest thing about this car only becomes clear if you're my fellow countryman. And it is its name. The funky new electric car, aptly named "Wuss".

:rofl:
 
They talk about the way the dash pins the occupant's legs, but have a look at the way that A-Pillar just snaps away from the roof and is bent around to 90 degrees. There's no way in hell you'd ever see me get into one of those cars, no way at all. I know my Impreza only has a 3 star rating and that's borderline enough. That thing should be banned straight up. And that's before I start bitching about its supposed greenness (electricity has to be generated somewhere)
 
What's tragic is if the hippie dummies had been driving their old ride, they might have survived. If there is ever a hippie pile-up, the old school Woodstock hippies would live.
[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEA8GnqhLlg[/YOUTUBE]
 
It's scary a car like this can be legal here. Just as a note though kaBOOMn, two cars travelling towards each other at 20mph does not equal one vehicle crashing into a fixed barrier at 40mph. I won't go into the boring maths here (mainly cause writing equations with no equation writer is impossible....plus I doubt anyone would listen :p :lol: ), but due to conservation of momentum and various other things, two cars hitting each other at 20mph with a combined closing speed of 40mph is in fact just like the cars hitting a fixed barrier at 20mph. It gets a little more complicated if one car is significantly heavier than the other though, and I think this is the biggest issue with the G-Whiz. There's going to be a lot of incomparability between a small car like this and an SUV, and in most normal crash situations, contact points will probably be at the bast of the windscreen, hence a really really nasty crash.
 
Top