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A parking lot collapsed in New York a few weeks ago. Bad record: one dead, at least four injured and multiple destroyed cars. The reason has not yet been fully elucidated. However, poor maintenance, poor maintenance of the building, and little static inspection by experts are suspected.
The fact is: new cars are growing and getting heavier not only in the USA, but also in Switzerland. The reasons for this are the boom in electric cars, which are increasingly heavier than comparable cars without electric propulsion, with huge battery packs as well as more comprehensive safety and comfort features.
high weight gain
According to data specialist Statista, a new Swiss car averaged 1309 kilograms in 1996, compared to 1723 kilograms already in 2021 – an increase of more than 30 percent, or 404 kilograms per vehicle! So 50 new cars parked on the same floor averaged around 65 tons in 1996 to over 86 tons in 2021 (also interesting: our cars are getting bigger)!
Therefore, the question arises: Can old car parks often still cope with new cars? And in the worst case, can they crash?
No action needed
When Blick asked, the operators of the Pfingstweid Car Park next to Hardbrücke made it all clear: Almost no electric vehicles were parked in the building anyway, as the car park itself did not have charging stations for electric vehicles. It is not yet possible to say whether the situation will change with the planned new construction of the Pfingstweid multi-storey car park.
No action is required at the moment at Parking Zürich AG (PZAG), which offers indoor and outdoor parking spaces in all districts of the city of Zurich: “PZAG regularly checks its car parks for security. At Blick’s request, management says not only experts from the Building Construction Department were brought in, but also outside experts.
The load is standardized
We got more concrete information from Plácido Pérez (56). Graduated with his own company at Bonaduz GR, the civil engineer has been head of civil engineering at the University of Applied Sciences in Graubünden since 2017 and has taught architecture and civil engineering for over 20 years. He explains: “For decades, the load of parking and traffic areas has been defined and specified in the SIA standard of the Swiss Association of Engineers and Architects. For us civil engineers, this means that we have to observe changes in usage behavior and consider accordingly in load-bearing structures.»
Pérez explains how the standard is applied in practice by comparing a Smart Fortwo to a Tesla Model X: The Smart requires approximately 4.4 square meters (m2).2) and its curb weight is 885 kilograms, which corresponds to a distributed load of 201 kilograms per square meter (kg/m)2) are equivalent. A Tesla Model X, on the other hand, weighs almost three times, or 2415 kilograms, when empty, but requires about 11 square meters of space.2. The surface load of the family electric car is therefore 220 kg/m2. The weight difference per square meter is therefore much smaller than assumed based on the different curb weights.
Big cars, big space
«The standardized surface load in Swiss car parks is 200 kg/m.2When a safety tolerance factor of 1.5 applies. Therefore, the maximum allowable surface load is 300 kilograms per square metre,” explains Pérez. Therefore, heavy vehicles will often be worthwhile due to their larger size. However, if the vehicle exceeds the permitted total weight of 3.5 tons, it may pose a problem in our multi-storey car parks. “However, with the allowable total weight of today’s cars, this should not be the case in the future,” says Plácido Pérez.
Source: Blick
I’m Ella Sammie, author specializing in the Technology sector. I have been writing for 24 Instatnt News since 2020, and am passionate about staying up to date with the latest developments in this ever-changing industry.
