Toyota announced some time ago that it would stop manufacturing vehicle models equipped only with internal combustion engines by 2025, focusing its production on hybrid or electric vehicles exclusively. The Swedish signature Volvo announced on March 2 that from 2030 onwards it will only sell electric cars in Europe. And the business Ford raised the same goal with the intermediate step that from mid-2026 its entire range of cars in Europe will consist of plug-in hybrid or 100% electric models, discontinuing plug-in hybrids in 2030. In addition to this, Renault has set up the first large-scale circular Economics factory in the automotive sector with its Flins plant where, among other things, old vehicles will be reconditioned to a new electric version and the recycling of batteries will be boosted.

What is the common goal of all these initiatives of the automobile companies? The decarbonization of private transport, promoting the replacement of conventional combustion vehicles by other increasingly less polluting vehicles, whether electric or hydrogen fuel cell (perhaps the best alternative, although this would be the subject of another specific reflection).

On the other hand, there are tens of thousands of car park parking spaces associated with existing buildings in Europe. It is to be expected that a high percentage of these will be occupied in the coming years by electric vehicles. However, such spaces were designed to meet the fire protection requirements of vehicles with combustion engines, not electric vehicles.

Although both manufacturers of electric vehicles and installers of electric charging points claim that these systems are very safe, and this is true, it is no less true that there are no perfect and infallible systems. In addition, fires in electric motors have to be extinguished with different procedures than those of thermal motors, with all that this implies in terms of affecting the space of car park, the installations it houses and the physical structure of the building itself.

In this context, a year ago a study was presented at the department of Construction, Installations and Structures of the University of Navarra that provided passive and active measures and maintenance actions to improve the safety of electric vehicles in subway parking lots and thus prevent possible accidents. These measures included from the analysis of the access of the power of the vehicles that could park (it is not the same to park 6 vehicles with 100 kWh batteries, than 16 vehicles with 35.5 kWh batteries), to the placement of thermographic cameras to control the heating of the batteries, or the supervision of the charging processes.

In fact, the Spanish rules and regulations on electric cars does not currently include safety or maintenance activities for subway parking lots, which requires an adaptation of existing documents and knowledge from other areas of work for translation to Building, thus reducing the potential hazards involving electric vehicle batteries.

The study also highlighted the need to carry out an intense and effective additional transversal research , as well as justifying that the measures that can and should be implemented are neither complex nor expensive. On the contrary, the study details changes that are in time to be implemented in view of the momentum that this sector is experiencing and that may soon lead to the creation of thousands of new jobs work, as has just been announced after the news about the creation of a Consortium between the Government, the group Seat-Volkswagen and Iberdrola to build a manufacturing plant for electric car batteries in Spain.

In this scenario of rapid technological evolution, architects have a duty and responsibility, along with legislators, to ensure safety in buildings. It is time to develop safety plans for these new uses before tens of thousands of charging points are installed inside buildings without knowing how they will behave in the event of an emergency. After all, the implementation of electric vehicles is as urgent to contribute to the decarbonization of our cities as it is to maintain and improve the safety levels of citizens.

As has been insistently pointed out in different forums, the new technologies to be implemented in buildings require in parallel the proactive improvement of security with new measures that update the existing ones.

Marta Blanco, Architect, and César Martín-Gómez, Senior Associate Professor of department of Construction, Installations and Structures, University of Navarra.