After watching this Nissan Leaf get thrown sideways into a pole at roadway speeds, you'll want to make sure you're paying attention in the real world. However, while the impact itself is tremendous, the fact that the electric vehicle's lithium-ion batteries escaped without bursting into a ball of fire is even more impressive, proving that the car's integrated fail-safe systems work as engineered.

DEKRA, which stands for Deutscher Kraftfahrzeug-Überwachungs-Verein, or German Motor Vehicle Inspection Association in German, teamed up with the University Medical Center of Göttingen for a high-speed, side-pole crash impact test to exhibit how safe electric vehicles and their powertrains are.

To prove that they’re just as safe as gas- or diesel-powered vehicles, DEKRA crash-tested a Nissan Leaf and its distant French subcompact cousin, the Renault Zoe, at 75 kilometers per hour (47 miles per hour), which is significantly faster than the standard side-pole crash test speed. The resulting footage, as you can see, is pretty spectacular.