No, Your EV Won't Cook You
Hi Dear readers,
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As with any relatively new technologies, there are those that are easily spooked by stories of those silent and invisible killers: micro-, and other, waves. Given their massive batteries and cabling it is easy to dream up, and with current social media tools spread, horror stories of how our cars are slowly cooking us. Leave it to the Germans to get to the bottom of it with some extensive testing. ADAC put test-dummies covered from head to toe with sensors into 11 BEVs, two plugins and one good old combustion vehicle to see what's what.
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Let's start with the obvious, yes electric vehicles emit electromagnetic fields. Especially during starting and braking there is radiation that your body is submitted to. In the footwell of the car these values are strongest, with much lower readings near your head and upper body. Before you start panicking, the electromagnetic field in a car is perfectly comparable to what you are subjected to in other forms of transport like the metro. All cars tested were well within the normal health limits.
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You should also realize that the electromagnetic fields are not just produced by electric motors in plugin cars. If you want a warm bum in your diesel or petrol car by turning on the heat seating, you will be subjected to them as well. And they are higher than what is measured from the drive-train components.
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Some of you might be wondering, what happens when you charge the vehicle? Good thing ADAC thought of that as well. The results might even be slightly surprising. There is an electromagnetic field that can be measured near the charging cable, especially during the start of the charging process. But, they are higher when "slow" charging with AC than with high powered DC charging. I assume this has something to do with the inverter in the car that has to get to work to turn the AC into DC to feed the battery. Again there is nothing to worry about, the levels measured during the charging process are even lower than during your drive of the vehicle.
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Adac Article
Grtz
Pieter
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