As EV sales surge and cars get heavier, parking garages have to change

Driving is changing.Nowadays, hybrids and electric vehicles are common around the world, and the overall size and weight of cars – whether they are fully electric or using electric internal combustion engine – is increasing.

From the accessibility of EV charging points to noise levels, new designs and technologies have created a host of issues that will need to be addressed in the coming years.

Car parks (known as multi-storey car parks in the UK) are one area where the proliferation of electric and larger vehicles is expected to have a significant impact.

Earlier this year, the London-based Institution of Structural Engineers released Updated design guidelines For parking lots.

The wide-ranging document covers all structures where cars can be parked – including those that are multi-storey, underground or within residential and office buildings – and how they are designed, built and maintained. This guide has been written for all stakeholders involved in parking lot design.

One potential problem has to do with the load on the vehicles we drive. According to the agency, average vehicle weight has increased from 1.5 tons in 1974 to nearly 2 tons in 2023.

in a statementwhich said the increase in weight was “due to increases in electric and hybrid batteries and vehicle size.”

It added: “This additional load and changing fire safety requirements are considerations not only for new car parks, but also for existing structures.”

Chris Wapples, a researcher at the agency, author and supervisory consultant of the guide, told CNBC that some high-end executive sedans and far-range SUVs on the market now weigh more than 3 tons.

When the guidance was published in June, there was significant concern that some car parks could collapse under the weight of heavier vehicles.

“It’s something we have to think about, but we can’t be too alarmist about it,” Walples told CNBC.

“The thing to remember is that it’s the heavy vehicles, if you will, that are causing the damage, not vehicles that are heavier than they were 40 years ago but still within the design capacity of the parking lot,” he continued to explain.

The latter type of vehicle still accounts for the majority, he said. Still, the trend toward larger vehicles shows no signs of abating.

“We are now seeing an increase in SUVs, large executive vehicles (both fossil fuel vehicles and battery vehicles), and pickup trucks, which are all very heavy vehicles.”

In some cases, the cumulative load of these vehicles in the parking lot can present some challenges.

“If a pickup truck is severely overloaded and the parking lot is weak, you have a potential disaster,” Walples said. So planning and preparation are key — hence the updated guidance.

“We’ve said that as an industry we have to actually inspect our parking lots and make sure this doesn’t happen,” Walples said. “Because we want the public to maintain confidence in our parking and structural engineers.”

One way to do this is to make sure you get a structural assessment of your garage.

“If it’s not strong enough, then it needs to be strengthened,” he added. “It may not need to be reinforced everywhere, it may just be individual elements.”

If that option proves “prohibitively expensive,” vehicles may be inspected before entering the garages, Walples said. Another possible solution is to keep the “heavyweights” at the bottom.

Speaking of electric vehicles, another area of ​​concern involves fire safety.That’s because when an electric car ignites are not common, excluding them may be challenging.

“It’s very, very difficult to actually put out a fire in an electric vehicle, especially when the battery is on fire because you have so much energy locked up,” Walples said.

He went on to highlight the key role that sprinkler systems are likely to play in the future, particularly in underground installations.

“While a sprinkler system will not put out a car fire, it will slow down the rate of spread in the parking lot, so it will continually… ‘put out’ the car next to the car on fire and prevent that car from catching fire.”

This should give the fire department time to arrive on scene and extinguish the flames.

While electric vehicle fires are a “concern,” Waples stressed that vehicles running on gasoline also have the potential to catch fire and create challenging conditions.

Discussions about how car parks and garages need to change to accommodate new types and sizes of vehicles extend beyond the UK

In February 2023, the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, established a working group to focus on developments related to “fire safety deployment of charging points in covered parking lots”.

AVERE, the European Electric Vehicle Association, co-leads the working group with the Commission.

The Brussels-based organization said in a statement to CNBC that the working group “aims to develop guidelines to help national and local authorities implement rules to welcome electric vehicles into covered parking lots while maintaining fire safety.”

The statement also said that “the rise of electric vehicles… helps us mitigate climate change and creates new issues, including weight and impact on parking.”

Beyond this, AVERE stressed the importance of involving a wide range of stakeholders in discussions – from parking operators and firefighters to EV representatives, insurance companies and companies that manufacture and operate charging points.

“There is no one-size-fits-all solution to fire safety and weight/size increases in all buildings,” its statement states. “It is easier to change the structure of future car parks, but existing car parks represent different challenges.”

“Having said that, we need to ensure that the rules for existing buildings find the right balance to allow parking operators to operate them at a reasonable cost while improving fire safety.”

According to the International Energy Agency, sales of electric vehicles will exceed 10 million in 2022, including plug-in hybrids and pure electric vehicles.

Looking ahead, the Paris-based organization is seen by many as the authority on the energy transition, estimate Nearly one in five new cars sold this year will be electric.

Back in the UK, Chris Wapples is keen to look at the bigger picture. “The Structural Engineers Association, and myself in particular, are not opposed to electric vehicles,” he said.

“We’re really trying to facilitate new car parks to really respond to electric vehicles and the general increase in vehicle size.”