12. The expert of the United States of America, on behalf of the co-sponsors (European Union, China and Japan) and the members of the IWG GTR No. 20, Phase 2, reported on the work progress of the group. He said that the IWG had met in Sweden from 11 to 13 September 2018. He expressed that the IWG continued the discussions on major technical issues, such as thermal propagation, water immersion, toxicity and gas management, and 3D vibration. He noted that “The White Paper” on the topic of thermal propagation was discussed extensively and updated. He added that the IWG also discussed issues regarding water immersion and vibration of the battery system and raised fundamental concerns on: (a) lack of field data and justification for the water immersion requirement and (b) vibration requirement is mainly for reliability/durability instead of for safety purpose. He finally announced that IWG aimed to complete its work by 2021 and that the next meeting of the IWG was planned from 22 to 24 January 2019, in Detroit, United States of America.

13. The expert from OICA underlined the complexity of the work involved to cover all areas not strictly related to electric vehicles and urged participation from the experts on frontal and lateral collisions, with expertise from the different fields of UN Regulations annexed to the 1958 Agreement. The Chair of GRSP clarified that the aim of IWG was not to regulate crash tests of electric vehicles instead the aim is to develop pass/fail criteria after the crash tests. However, he clarified that in parallel to the framework of IWG activities, a subgroup had been established to align UN Regulation No. 100 with UN GTR No. 20. He suggested inviting experts on UN Regulations Nos. 94 and 95 to participate in the activities of that subgroup. The expert from Japan announced that he was closely working with the experts from OICA and EC to present an informal proposal for a new series of amendments to align UN Regulation No. 100 with Phase 1 of UN GTR No. 20 by the May 2019 session of GRSP.