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Comment by HeyLaughingBoy | Hacker News Reader

FTA: “The system was not made to handle vehicles greater than 5,000 pounds.”

The curb weight of the most popular vehicle in the USA, the Ford F-150, is 4,200 to 5,700lbs. How's it working now?

>The curb weight of the most popular vehicle in the USA, the Ford F-150

It's worth noting that even though the "most popular vehicle" is a pickup truck, pickup trucks aren't the most popular type of car on the road, making up for less than 20% of vehicles.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/276506/change-in-us-car-...

It is still a lot

That's a bit disingenuous when SUVs are another 40% of the market, making ~60% of vehicles sold still the size and weight of trucks, with or without beds.

"SUVs" include crossovers, and they're by far more popular than truck based SUVs. The best selling SUVs (and crossovers) is the Toyota RAV4, Honda CR-V, and Nissan Rogue, all of which top out at around 3500 lb.

https://www.kbb.com/best-cars/most-popular-suvs/

EVs account for 1% of vehicles, and only 7.6% of new cars. If trucks haven’t been a major issue at 20% of the vehicle population, making a big deal out of EVs seems a bit overblown.

https://www.edmunds.com/electric-car/articles/percentage-of-...

Does this also mean they don’t care about semi trucks going through guardrails? Semi trucks account for 10% of highway miles traveled, which is also more than EVs.

https://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/freight/freight_analysis/nat_freigh...

But we're forecasting growth in all EV bands. The average vehicle weight will double in the next 30 years.

It does make sense to start thinking and talking about this now (before that happens) so we can fix it.

Yeah! Also the study video is a head on collision with a wood-post steel guardrail, and that is not at all a common angle to hit those at.

The F-150 or most any modern truck even a midsize with a couple passengers is over 5000.

Who funded the University of Nebraska to specifically test EVs in an improbable perpendicular collision with a guardrail? Why’s it promoted as news?

Guardrails are typically installed such that a head on is almost impossible - they are designed for more of a glancing blow that redirects you back to the road. In that application I've seen them keep a fully loaded semi from crossing a medium into oncoming traffic.

To get a head on at speed you would need to going across the road - maybe in the desert it is flat enough to get your car up to speed when going perpendicular to the road, but I'm not sure why you would try that.

The other option is hit the start of the guard rail - while this can happen, the start of guardrails are generally angled so this is still a redirecting blow not head on. Where they cannot be the start is covered by rubber dumpers to slow you down before you hit it.

This is true, but they are also designed with a maximum deflection for a worst case head-on crash.

Typical one-rail guard rails should not deflect more than 2-4ft, while the cable style you see in interstate medians are designed for something like 5-12 ft.

For those comparing this (EVs) to trucks, the difference is center of gravity. Even if a rail is only designed for a given weight, much effort went into containing trucks and other high center of gravity vehicles. The rail catches the vehicle and holds it down, redirecting excess energy into the ground. (Its why cable-styled rails have a gap below the top cable. Others have similar features.)

But what they are not designed for is excess weight with a low center of gravity, where the excess energy just blows through the rail and can't easily be redirected in a more safe direction.

> Who funded the University of Nebraska to specifically test EVs in an improbable perpendicular collision with a guardrail?

The US Army - who use the same barriers at road blocks. It looks like the research was really about heavier vehicles. The focus on EVs does ignore the general trend to larger vehicles as you say.

https://engineering.unl.edu/news/240131/mwrsf_evs_safety/

That might explain the angle as well. It seems to me that someone ramming a barricade would likely do so at a perpendicular angle.

Is it a head on collision? The first angle in the video makes it look like it is, but the second angle makes it clearer that its actually hitting from an angle. It seems to be close to a 45 degree angle, which is slightly closer to a real world scenario.

Exactly! The curb weight of my Tesla Model 3 is 4000 lbs max[1]. So how is this article anything but a hit piece on electric cars, as usual?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Model_3

Electric cars tend to be much heavier than ICEs. While your model 3 is lighter than the limit it is a small car that is just barely under the limit. While much larger F150 starts out at only slightly heavier.

EVs are heavier but by far the heaviest vehicles sold by volume are ICE SUVs and trucks. This should be a neutral measure based on the risky attribute since heavier vehicles are more dangerous to everyone regardless of the power source.

There are already a few EV trucks and SUVs - and they are significantly heavier in general. Maybe a diesel truck (which mostly doesn't even have a EV option yet) would be as heavy - I can't find any specs to compare but maybe your google-fu is better. A Tesla model3 is not much lighter than a F150 (lowest weight of the F150), but is clearly much smaller.

Yes, nobody’s arguing that EVs are light. My point was simply that because EVs are still a small percentage of the market there are more heavy ICE vehicles on the road because we’re three decades into consumers moving away from small cars. That Tesla 3 buyer was more likely to have also been considering an Escalade than a Honda Civic.

Since when is 4000 just barely under 5000?

A Dodge Charger is heavier than a Model 3, and it's also a small car.

Cause.. Big Oil FUD

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