The explosion of an experimental hybrid vehicle developed with European funding last Friday in Naples, southern Italy, killed two researchers on board, the National Research Council (CNR), the Italian equivalent of France’s CNRS, said on Thursday.
• Also read: Stag do in Italy: Neighbors panic over fake kidnapping
• Also read: VIDEO | Since he is actively wanted, he faces five years in prison for graffiti on the Colosseum in Rome
• Also read: Italy: Fresco of a “pizza” discovered in Pompeii.
During the night from Wednesday to Thursday, “Fulvio Filace, the trainee (aged 25) who was on board the car that exploded in Naples with the researcher Maria Vittoria Prati, died,” according to a CNR press release that “explains his pain and expresses his sadness”. dismay” and united “around the families of the two victims, their colleagues and friends”.
The young man, who was placed in an induced coma, suffered third-degree injuries to 70% of his body from the hybrid vehicle explosion.
A hybrid car combines two types of motorization: thermal motorization (petrol or diesel) and electric motorization. To do this, it is equipped with a heat engine, at least one electric motor and a traction battery.
The CNR, which immediately launched an internal investigation, mobilized the investigators “to find out the causes of this very serious accident and to facilitate the progress of the investigations”. “The loss of two lives, all the more so in such dramatic circumstances, deeply affects the scientific community across Italy,” stressed the CNR.
Maria Vittoria Prati, 66, a specialist in the study of emissions and the use of alternative fuels, died Monday as a result of the accident on the Naples ring road. She drove the vehicle while the trainee sat in the passenger seat.
According to the Italian agency AGI, the Naples Public Prosecutor’s Office, which had opened investigations into fire and murder, seized a prototype identical to the one that exploded on Friday.
It is a Volkswagen Polo Diesel (Tdi) used as part of a European research project called “Life-Save” (Solar Aided Vehicle Electrification), which aims to test an electric motor with batteries powered by solar panels in vehicles with internal combustion engines, again according to AGI.
For their part, firefighters conducted analyzes to determine the exact contents of two bottles that were on board the vehicle and would be the cause of the explosion.
The Life-Save project’s website is currently down and its home page only reads a “message of condolences to the families of Maria Vittoria Prati and Fulvio Filace for their tragic end”.