One of the most common questions EV-curious drivers ask is what happens to the battery when the car crashes. Electrifying went to Geely's safety center in Ningbo, China, billed as the largest and most advanced of its kind, to watch a real answer rather than explain one. The site tests everything from battery integrity to cybersecurity to cabin air quality. The test car was a Zeekr 7X, a family SUV already on sale in Europe and due in the UK by the end of the year. A weighted rig representing a saloon car of roughly 1.3 to 1.4 tons was fired down a runway into the rear of the Zeekr at 84 km/h, a standard test in China. The rear end was destroyed, coolant leaked and the tailgate popped, but the result that mattered came after inspection: the cabin stayed intact, the doors still opened, and the battery pack and its high-voltage connections were undamaged.
The footage is reassuring, but it speaks to a fear that data has been quietly answering for years. Electrifying cited its own survey of more than 13,000 UK drivers in which 70 percent of non-owners admitted concerns about battery safety, and that gap between perception and evidence is the real story. Independent fire-service and insurance analyses have generally found that EVs are no more prone to fires than petrol cars, and often less so per mile driven, even though an EV fire is harder to extinguish when it does happen. That nuance is why the crash matters less than the diagnostics around it. A pack that survives a wreck is good engineering. A pack an insurer can quickly certify as safe to keep using is what actually lowers the cost of owning the car, and that is the part of the system the industry has not finished building.
The video goes further than the single crash. Geely's facility can run impacts up to 75 mph indoors and operates a climatic wind tunnel spanning minus 40 to 60 degrees Celsius, with simulated rain, snow and winds up to 155 mph. The Zeekr 7X offers two packs on an 800-volt platform, a 100 kWh CATL Qilin battery and Geely's own 75 kWh LFP unit, the latter validated by submersion for two days, fire at up to 1,000 degrees, deep cold, a three-kilometer mud drag, a 22-ton roller and a 10-meter drop. Electrifying then took the insurance question to Thatcham Research, whose Ben Townsend explained why EVs still cost more to cover. Most claims are low-speed knocks, not catastrophes, and EV mass, slow battery diagnostics and repair complexity drive cost. A damaged charge port can turn a 15-minute job into a four-and-a-half-hour one. Thatcham is already studying repairability on cars like the Renault 5, BYD Dolphin Surf and Chery Tiggo 8, and is calling on makers to open up battery diagnostic data. The Association of British Insurers put EV claims at about 25 percent more expensive and repairs around 14 percent longer than equivalent combustion cars.
Bottom line: If you are still holding off on an EV because of battery fires, this is the video to watch, because the engineering answer is emphatic. The harder truth is that safety and insurance cost are now separate problems. Manufacturers have made packs that survive abuse most owners will never inflict, yet premiums stay high because the repair and diagnostic ecosystem has not caught up with a century of combustion knowledge. The fix is boring and slow: better battery diagnostics, open repair data and more EVs on the road generating claims history. Buy with confidence in the safety. Budget honestly for the insurance.