Electric vehicle fires are notoriously difficult to put out and require copious amounts of water to extinguish.
It’s one of the less awesome aspects of EVs, and one that can have devastating consequences for any drivers unfortunate enough to get in an accident.
In response, Chinese engineers have come up with a surprising — and chaotic — solution. In collaboration with the China Vehicle Collision Repair Technical and Research Center, engineers developed an EV battery ejection system that shoots the offending pack out of the side of the vehicle like a giant piece of toast.
Footage making its rounds on social media shows a smoking battery pack blasting out of the side of an electric SUV, landing on a pad roughly twenty feet away.
But whether the solution will catch on remains dubious at best. For one, the jetpack lithium-ion package could easily result in even more injuries — or worse, light a different car or innocent pedestrian on fire.
Details are also hard to come by. Several carmakers have since denied being involved in the unusual tech demo, as CarScoops reports.
According to Chinese state-run news outlet, the Epoch Times, the demonstration drew widespread criticism. While media outlets implicated the Chinese company Joyson Electronics, the firm has since denied any involvement in the project. Automaker iCar also denied involvement after users pointed out the vehicle in the clip resembled the firm’s 03T crossover SUV.
That kind of defensive reaction shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, given that the ejection system is, in CarScoop‘s words, a “liability with wings.”
“Perhaps the correct analogy is not ejecting the warp core, but firing photon torpedoes,” Jalopnik joked in its writeup.
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