A 7,000-Pound Car Smashed Through a Guardrail. That’s Bad News for All of Us.

dantheclamman@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 323 points –
A 7,000-Pound Car Smashed Through a Guardrail. That’s Bad News for All of Us.
slate.com
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It’s worth highlighting that this study isn’t really about the merits of EVs. After all, you can buy an EV that weighs less than 5,000 pounds. You just can’t electrify your favorite already-large car—or even buy a hulking gas-powered car—and expect guardrails to work as intended. “Weight is a universal problem; it is not unique to electric vehicles,” Stolle said. “We have similar concerns about the compatibility of the biggest gas-powered cars with our guardrail system.” The 6,700-pound Chevrolet Silverado 1500 already weighs too much, based on the result from this research, and the 8,500-pound Silverado EV weighs even more.

Yes but you called out trucks like they're the only issue. An electric leaf is almost 5k pounds....a leaf...

A leaf is 3500-3900 lbs, not almost 5k lbs

Well if you squint at that round to the nearest 5k ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ ͡⁠°⁠ ͜⁠ʖ⁠ ͡⁠°⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

Curb weight on them is 4,900, yes it's not 5k that's why I said nearly 5k....and the point I am making is that a tiny car like that weighing that much shows that batteries are not light.

You added an extra 1000 lbs to the heaviest version, then rounded up. The whole entire point of standard weights is so numbskulls don't just make up numbers for how much things weigh, like you are. The leaf is 350-3900 lbs, not 4900 lbs, not 5000 lbs. Please go back to elementary school.

https://www.autoblog.com/buy/2022-Nissan-LEAF-S__4dr_Hatchback/specs/

Should have clarified that I meant gross weight.

Curb weight is the weight of the car itself, plus any gas, oil, etc it needs to function.

Gross weight is maximum weight the vehicle is designed to support. It's the curb weight plus the payload capacity.

If a car has a curb weight of 3k lbs and a gross weight of 4k, it doesn't weigh 4k lbs unless you have 1k lbs of passengers and cargo in it.