Mahindra XEV 9e Electric SUV: Crash Test On Video

Mahindra recently revealed their first two ‘Born Electric’ SUVs- the BE 6e and XEV 9e. Both vehicles are based on the INGLO platform and have attractive starting prices. They come with 59 and 79-kWh battery packs. Having such a large battery would obviously raise concerns of crash safety and tolerance to mechanical and thermal impacts. Mahindra says these electric SUVs are completely safe and even demonstrated the same by conducting a live crash test before the media.

The in-house crash test was conducted at Mahindra’s Passive Safety Lab in Tamil Nadu. Representatives of a selected few media houses, including us, witnessed the action. The demo test was performed on the XEV 9e alone. It was put to a 40% frontal offset deformable barrier crash test at 64 km/h.

Wondering what the results were? Well, the airbags were deployed and the shell remained intact. The electric powertrain or battery pack did not take hazardous damage or impact.

How Safe Is the Mahindra XEV 9e?

The carmaker hasn’t revealed the Global NCAP crash test results of the 9e. In fact, we’re not sure if the evaluation program has tested it yet. We could soon get to know the GNCAP results as well. Owing to its all-electric nature, special safety evaluation tests (including a nail penetration test) were also performed on the battery pack.

The battery pack was also tested extensively for water and impact resistance. A live battery was submerged in water completely and kept for 30 minutes. Mahindra claims nothing happened- a testament to the effective waterproofing. Furthermore, a fully charged unit was also exposed to fire, to test the thermal resistance. Mahindra even crushed a live battery pack from the 9e using a 22T truck.

All of these tests involved severe abuse to the vehicle and its powertrain but turned out to demonstrate the XEV 9e’s high safety standards. Many manufacturers these days, conduct internal crash tests before the actual GNCAP evaluation. The XEV 9e with its long list of safety features including an advanced ADAS suite, is expected to fetch Mahindra another 4 or 5-star GNCAP rating. The Indian carmaker already has several 4-star and 5-star rated products in their domestic lineup.

The equipment array on the top-spec consists of 7 airbags, a 360-degree camera, parking sensors, blind-spot monitoring and ADAS, an electronic parking brake and a tyre pressure monitor. Even the base spec comes with six airbags, a reverse camera, an electronic parking brake and a tyre pressure monitor.

Features like the brake-by-wire technology, semi-active suspension setup, all-wheel disc brakes, etc also seem to have contributed to the reassuring crash test performance.

More About The Mahindra XEV 9e

The electric SUV will be based on the INGLO architecture and will come with a powertrain that makes 288 bhp and 380 Nm. The 0-100 sprint is claimed to take 6.8 seconds.

There will be three variants to the Mahindra XEV 9e– Pack 1, Pack 2 and Pack 3. Lending it an unbeatable value proposition is the starting price of ₹21.90 lakh (ex-showroom, introductory). The manufacturer hasn’t yet given out the prices of Pack 2 and Pack 3 variants.