Innovating for safer roadways

In May 2012, a Nissan GT-R was traveling at more than 110 miles per hour when it collided with an electronic, battery-operated taxi in Shenzhen, China.

The results were devastating. Three individuals lost their lives. Flames engulfed a nearby tree. The scene, which was akin to something out of a Hollywood blockbuster film, was prominently shared across news media, as it was the first reported electric vehicle crash fire.

This came just six months after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration experienced its first electric vehicle fire following a crash test, and as result, Elham Sahraei’s research was suddenly in great demand.

“This was the first round of where people were getting more interested in our research,” said Sahraei, associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Temple University.

In addition to her role as a faculty member in Temple’s College of Engineering, Sahraei serves as the director of the Electric Vehicle Safety Lab (EVSL) and the Center for Battery Safety (CBS) at Temple University. Together, the center and lab focus on researching the safety of lithium-ion batteries under extreme conditions, with the goal of enhancing safety for people everywhere relying on lithium-ion battery-powered vehicles and devices.

The work from both her lab and center may soon find itself an even bigger audience. Earlier this year, Sahraei launched Inovele LLC, a battery safety company that is presently incubating at Temple’s Innovation Nest, a space located at Temple’s Health Sciences Center that is dedicated to commercializing new innovations from Temple researchers and spurring student innovation. Inovele’s goal is to help companies design safer, lighter and more efficient battery products, specifically related to electric vehicles.

“To effectively allow the stakeholders to apply what we have learned in our labs, we needed a commercial entity to get engaged with companies and apply the experiments and modeling on their specific products. Otherwise, the knowledge we gain in the lab might just sit in publications because the companies don’t have the equipment or the workforce to apply it,” Sahraei said. “What we do at Inovele is help companies use our new technology and apply it to design safer, lighter, more cost-effective products. That is how we make sure that the knowledge that we gain from our work in the lab makes a tangible difference.” 

 

 

 

Contributing toward the greater good

Since that initial electric vehicle crash in 2012, there have been a handful of others. And on each occasion, there has been considerable media coverage, as fires started from an electric vehicle crash are much different than those started by an internal combustion engine vehicle.

Because the fires are not started by gasoline, they often take much longer to put out. The scene of the crash following an electric vehicle collision is a frightening sight, and it’s led to a misperception that these vehicles are more unsafe than those with traditional engines.

“The truth is that we know less about the behavior of lithium batteries in a crash than we know about the behavior in internal combustion engines,” Sahraei said.

Statistics also suggest that electric vehicles might actually be safer. According to the National Transportation Safety Board, there are about 25 fires for every 100,000 electric vehicles sold compared to about 1,530 fires for every 100,000 internal combustion engine vehicles. The caveat there, of course, is that there are far fewer electric vehicles than there are traditional internal combustion engine cars. Therefore, there are much fewer miles driven and accident data available to have final conclusions.

 But that number is growing. In the third quarter of 2024, electric vehicle sales in the United States reached record highs, representing an 11% year-over-year increase. This makes the work of Sahraei and Inovele all the more important.

“The main reason we are doing this, and our main goal, is to contribute to safety of electric transportation,” Sahraei said. “We want to be able to help all these different car companies or any company that has batteries that can be subjected to mechanical deformation so that they can design their integration of the battery cell into the car in a way that it will be safer, more cost efficient and have better range. Because if we provide this service, this modeling technique and this testing technique for car companies, drone companies and even aerospace companies, then Inovele will have made a really strong contribution to a safer, greener, more sustainable future.”