he Federal Highway Research Institute (BASt) started in 2010 the establishment of long-term observation of the vehicle market and the accidents of cars with different alternative drive technology to follow the future development, to analyse and identify promptly possible negative effects on traffic safety of vehicles with alternative drive technology in Germany. The data of the present report documents the penetration of passenger cars with alternative drive technology and informs about the accident involvement of vehicles with alternative drive technology up to 2011. It has been shown that hybrid cars have a strongly growing market. The expension rate is almost on the same high level as in previous years (about 28%, typed stock). The number of typed electric vehicles increased sharply, from 212 in 2010 to 1880 in 2011. The real stock of electric vehicles (including untyped vehicles), in contrast, has doubled from 2010 to 2011 to 4,541 cars. This points to an increasing mass production of electric vehicles. Passenger cars with alternative drive technology (excluding gas) have a higher proportion of urban accidents than cars with conventional drive in 2011. Hybrid vehicles have thereby an increased participation rate of about 76%. The relatively high proportion of alternatively powered vehicles in urban accidents has to be explained especially in light of the use of these vehicles. (Author/publisher)
Abstract