On the internet you regularly see videos of an electric car that is on fire. In many cases it is a Tesla, because that is what internet trolls like the most. Now Aiways wants to boast that their electric cars have burned down zero times. Not one. Nope. nada.
We know the Chinese car brand of the Aiways U5 (review), a large electric SUV with a lot of legroom that you can just buy in the Netherlands. Its battery pack has a capacity of 63 kWh and a very nice feature: it has never caught fire.
If an electric car catches fire after a collision, it is almost always due to the battery pack. Aiways claims to have developed one of the safest batteries. That sounds like a case of ‘We at Toilet Duck Recommend Toilet Duck’, but we want to give Aiways ducks the benefit of the doubt.
Why Aiways electric car does not burn
Their battery has a sandwich construction with an insulating plate between the battery module and the cooling plate. This makes it seemingly impossible for leaking coolant to enter the module, even after a major impact. Aiways has subjected the battery pack to 580 rigorous tests, which is much more than the 51 tests prescribed by China. That sounds good, but…
The disadvantage of such tests is that they do not take into account the absurd situations that can arise in the real world. Show us a dashcam video of a U5 with a drunk Russian behind the wheel making a triple rollover, uprooting half a forest, then being hit by an army tank and not catching fire. Then we’re done.