With electric vehicles (EV) slowly entering the consumer market, there is a fresh emphasis on vehicle safety in the event of a crash. The battery packs of many EVs can supply more than 400 V and 200 A, which could be lethal if not isolated from vehicle occupants. Emergency services need to be retrained to extract passengers from a crashed EV as cutting through high-voltage areas with jaws of life can result in serious injury.
Federal-Mogul has developed a protective product for high-voltage electric cables called CrushShield. This cable shield
consists of a rugged, multi-layer fabric that both absorbs and disperses energy in an impact, and isolates the cable from the rest of the vehicle. New US federal motor-vehicle safety standards require that the manufacturers of EVs ensure that the safety of occupants is not threatened in a crash more so than in a vehicle with an internal-combustion powerplant. This product will allow original-equipment manufacturers to retrofit existing EVs and hybrids to conform to this legislation.