Germany’s Federal Motor Transport Authority, the Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt has said there is ‘no evidence’ of serious risk of explosion following tests on controversial AC gas HFO-1234yf. The KBA carried out the tests following complaints by engineers at Mercedes that the refrigerant could ignite in the event of an accident.

Chemical company DuPont has fully backed the report. Thierry Vanlancker, President, DuPont Chemicals & Fluoroproducts, said, “KBA confirms once again that its testing produced no adequate evidence of a serious risk related to HFO-1234yf.  In fact, the KBA indicates that all of their testing that was based on the requirements of German product safety law indicated no safety concerns whatsoever for the product.”

DuPont says that only under extreme testing conditions, that do not represent real-life crash scenarios, that the refrigerant could be made to ignite in a few isolated instances. It therefore affirms the highest level of confidence that the new refrigerant can be used safely in automotive air conditioning. 

The Society of Automotive Engineers also recently confirmed that there is no safety risk using HFO-1234yf.