The China Automotive Engineering Research Institute expects new national standards for electric vehicles (EV) to be ready by 2014.

The institute is working on developing independent crash test standards for EVs including side and rear collisions as well as head-on crashes, stdaily.com reported.

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The country at present has EV standards which are very basic with test crash data being limited to head-on collisions. The China Automotive Technology and Research Centre has done a considerable amount of crash testing with dozens of EVs. The collected data will be used for developing the new standards.

Crash testing research work for EVs is being done in sync with the International Organisation for Standardisation. China is the first country to have outlined safety standards for EVs.

According to Zhou Rong, chief engineer of the China Auto Standardisation Research Institution, EV safety standards include the danger of combustion of electric batteries, high levels of electrical current that may cause physical harm, the relatively heavy weight of EVs which may be extremely dangerous in the event of a crash, and the effect of radiation from electric batteries, the levels of which are much higher than mobile phones.

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