Risk of collapse?
Cars are much heavier than before and electric cars in particular often carry a lot of weight. That’s why the British parking association CPA is concerned about older parking garages. It could even pose a risk of collapse.
You might recognize it: in older parking garages it was sometimes snug and scalable enough to put a modern car in its place. You can see that the parking garage was still designed for the average size car. However, in their construction, not only the size of the past is taken into account, but sometimes also their weight. That’s a much lower average. The latter could pose a problem, especially now that more and more electric cars weigh above average, the BPA warns. Daily Mail.
The BPA states that the majority of multi-storey car parks in the UK are still designed for the British car fleet of 1970. As such, the BPA refers to the Ford Cortina (known as the Ford Taunus), a very popular midsize car class that weighed an average of less than a thousand kilo. Therefore, parking garages since then were not designed for the higher average weights of modern cars and with the advent of EVs, average weights will only increase further. “If the car is heavier than the design of the parking garage, the effect can be disastrous. All the internal components make the battery (electric car, Ed.) very heavy. No incidents yet, but I expect it to happen. it’s only a matter of time,” said one BPA engineer.
According to the BPA, UK car park managers have now been warned of the potential hazard and it is important for older car parks to check their maximum loads. It will already be obeyed. There are also critics. This is how the CEO of New AutoMotive, an organization committed to modern, greener mobility, can make himself heard. He said the BPA warning was “strange and misleading,” and the organization failed to identify large, conventionally powered SUVs as part of the potential problem.
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