UK Experts Think Heavy EVs Might Cause the Collapse of Old Parking Garages
Image: Hendrik Schmidt (AP)
EVs are heavy. That extra weight they carry could be putting some portions of infrastructure at risk. The Telegraph reports officials in the UK are worried that older multi-level parking garages could be at risk of collapse due to all that weight.
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With the coming EV transition, one thing that most cities and governments have yet to deal with is the reality of the weight of these things. They’re extremely heavy. Take for example the Ford F-150. In its heaviest configuration — the Raptor with 37-inch tires and performance package — it has a curb weight 5,886 pounds. An F-150 Lightning EV however has a curb weight just over 1,000 pounds more in its heaviest configuration of Platinum trim at 6,893 pounds. That extra weight these vehicles carry may be a danger to parking garages all over the UK. Aging infrastructure brought about due to years of disrepair have made some garages at risk of buckling, experts say. “I don’t want to be too alarmist, but there definitely is the potential for some of the early car parks in poor condition to collapse,” car park consultant and structural engineer Chris Whapples told The Telegraph.
The UK is pushing for a 2030 gas engine ban combined with the country’s poor infrastructure have raised alarms with experts to the point that new guidance is being created for parking structures. To get ahead of possible problems, Whapples and Russell Simmons, the head of the British Parking Association’s structures group, are recommending these structures have load-bearing weights to handle the higher weights of EVs. This guidance is expected to be published in the next few weeks.
The guidance will call for load limits on concrete parking garage floors to be increased from their current limit of 2.5 kilonewtons per square meter ( about 52.2 pound force/square foot) to 3 kilonewtons per square meter (62.6 pound force/square foot). The association was quick to point out that the guidance is just that, guidance and that there is no cause for alarm in thinking that some of these structures are at risk of imminent collapse. But these weight limits make logical sense to Simmons, who told The Telegraph that inspections of parking garages across the country over the last few months have shown many can’t handle the increased weight of EVs. “We have height restrictions in car parks, why not weight,” he said.
