US’s guardrail system can’t handle heavy EVs, preliminary test crashes indicate

KFOR by: The Associated Press

Jan 31, 2024

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Under an overcast sky last fall, engineers with a University of Nebraska road safety facility watched as an electric-powered pickup truck hurtled toward a guardrail installed on the facility’s testing ground on the edge of the local municipal airport.

The test crash was to see how the guardrail — the same type found along tens of thousands of miles of roadway in the United States — would hold up against electric vehicles that can weigh thousands of pounds more than the average gas-powered sedan.

It came as little surprise when the nearly 4-ton 2022 Rivian R1T tore through the metal guardrail and hardly slowed until hitting a concrete barrier yards away on the other side.

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