Every electric car that is admitted to the Netherlands meets the international and European approval and safety requirements for vehicles, and every country now encourages the purchase and use of these vehicles. In addition, the State Secretary for Infrastructure and Water Management is wearing extra TNO asked to map the fire safety of these cars.

Nevertheless, a fire safety fact sheet from 2014 shows that fire brigades no longer have to be reluctant to grant permits for charging stations in parking garages. Nevertheless, it appears that the national portfolio holder for incident response from the fire brigade stated in 2019 that more fire safety measures should be taken in parking garages due to the increase in the number of electric cars. 

The Minister of Justice and Security states that electric cars are at least as fire safety as vehicles with combustion engines and conventional batteries. It is true that extinguishing burning electric vehicles have different requirements than conventional cars. This will be included in the update of the TNO fact sheet.

Building regulations for parking garages in high-rise houses

The regulations for the fire safety of parking garages are specified in the Building Decree 2012. To further flesh out these regulations, the Netherlands Standardization Institute is working on a new NEN standard for the integral fire safety of parking garages at the request of the Ministry of the Interior. 

In this context, TNO is investigating how the building regulations of other countries (worldwide) take into account fire safety electric vehicles in parking garages. The new NEN standard will become part of the national building regulations.

Also read: Safety of remotely operated bridges falls short

 
Print Friendly, PDF & Email