Before Volvo launched the EX90, the Swedish automaker – already known as a safety pioneer – repeatedly emphasized how much work it had done to raise the safety bar for its fresh electric SUV. Almost every fresh release included statements such as: “The safety standard in the Volvo EX90 is also higher than in any previous Volvo car” and “The Volvo EX90 has an undetectable safety shield, enabled by our latest sensor technology, both inside and out “. But they focused on the car’s electronic array of sensors and cameras, monitoring everything from the road in front of and behind the vehicle to the driver’s fatigue state. The company did the same at the EX30 launch, writing that its fresh compact electric vehicle protects all occupants “with cutting-edge safety technology, as well as top-of-the-range structural design that meets our ambitious internal safety requirements – designed to prepare our cars for a variety of real-world scenarios.
To prove that the EX30 is sheltered, Volvo’s in-house crash testing laboratory conducted a side-impact test that resulted in the largest car, the EX90, hitting the side of the smallest car, the EX30.
We don’t see any view of the EX30’s interior either during the test or afterwards. In Motoring news in Europe Lotta Jakobsson of the Volvo Cars Safety Center said data showed the two “little women” sitting on the impacted side “were well protected” during the crash and injuries were minimal.
The physical design of both cars helps achieve this goal. The EX30 is designed to disperse all of its forces around the car’s structure, ensuring “balanced interaction” during competition. It’s pretty standard stuff. On the EX90, part of the lower front structure extends forward of the vehicle’s main protection structure. How ANE As editor-in-chief Doug Bolduc put it, the lower structure was “specifically designed to aid it absorb much of the force of a collision with a smaller vehicle… that is, not only to protect the EX90’s occupants, but also to protect the EX30’s occupants.” The result is “less damage than would be expected from moving a larger car to a smaller car.”
Watch the video and hear Jakobsson’s take on how current trends in structural, passive and vigorous safety will not make the world accident-free, but will reduce injuries while making accidents less common.
