The main focus of the current development projects in the automobile industry is on the vehicles with an alternative power train such as hybrid vehicles and electric vehicles. The first hybrid and battery electric vehicles are already available. Companies are working on a final “roll out” for all vehicle classes with high pressure. With the use of these new technologies, some safety issues and risks could take place.

For these kinds of vehicles, the use of lithium ion batteries seems to be the most common approach out of the range and performance point of view. Because of the existing risks, special safety systems have to be developed and included.

How do these existing risks influence the passive safety level of a vehicle and what has to be done to reduce the post crash severity? Within this paper, an overview of the risks of the lithium-iontechnology like chemical and electrical risks that are dependent on the several used chemistries will be given, as well as an overview of the worldwide requirements and existing test configurations. I will discuss the solutions as to why these risks are relevant for the vehicle crash safety, what kind of reactions could take place in a crash event and how the existing battery component tests compare with the common vehicle crash test characteristics. The results of a statistical research according the relevant crash configurations based on the GIDASand NASS-databases will be shown, as well as an investigation according to the packaging positions of the lithium ion batteries in the vehicles. Finally an overview of some approaches used by manufacturers concerning crash safety will be given.

A concept of an approach to assess the safety level of a lithium hybrid battery of an electric and hybrid vehicle will be shown. This method includes the used cell form and cell chemistry as well as other influencing factors. It should be noted that the used crush pulses of battery component tests are different when compared with the vehicle crash tests and the characteristic of real world accidents.

A possible finding is that it is necessary to develop and integrate systems that guide the released energy (in a worst case assumption for a crash) of the batteries in a direction away from the vehicle and the occupants. This means to stiffen and weaken the housing of a battery according to the packaging and to include passive cooling systems, which could be helpful after a crash event. This approach is different compared to existing approaches, which are based on using a very stiff housing to protect the battery cells. This may work for smaller batteries, but could be very dangerous for bigger ones.

This study is limited to electric and hybrid vehicles, in which lithium ion batteries are used. To gain the first results, only a small set of available lithium ion battery cells could be used.