EV opposition in the media is ramping up

Well, if it is yet another ICE vehicle fire, it is time that we considered:
  • Banning them from high-concentration areas like car parks or ships due to the fire risks (unless emptied of fuel), or at least segregating them from lower risk vehicles like EVs.
  • Adding explicit fire safety checks to the MOT test (unless these already exist?).
  • Mandatory fitting of automatic under-bonnet fire suppression systems.
  • Increasing insurance premiums on ICE vehicles to reflect the full cost of events like this.

The debate should be about how quickly we can move away from dangerous polluting ICE technology.
 
At least we can add it to johns list of questions to ask an ICE owner.
johnb80 said:
I just let em get on with it telling me how much money I've lost, my battery will ve dead in 7 years which will write the car off etc. If it keeps em happy with their smug grins thats good for me, less EV's on the road = more chargers available.

I also ask them:-

I am thinking of replacing my electric car with a petrol car and have some questions.
1. I have heard that petrol cars can not refuel at home while you sleep? How often do you have to refill elsewhere? Is this several times a year? Will there be a solution for refueling at home?
2. Which parts will I need service on and how often? The car salesman mentioned a box with gears in it. What is this and will I receive a warning with an indicator when I need to change gear?
3. Can I accelerate and brake with one pedal as I do today with my electric car?
4. Do I get fuel back when I slow down or drive downhill? I assume so, but need to ask to be sure.
5. The car I test drove seemed to have a delay from the time I pressed the accelerator pedal until it began to accelerate. Is that normal in petrol cars?
6. We currently pay about 1.2p per mile to drive our electric car. I have heard that petrol can cost up to 10 times as much so I reckon we will lose some money in the beginning. We drive about 20,000 miles a year. Let's hope more people will start using petrol so prices go down.
7. Is it true that petrol is flammable? Should I empty the tank and store the petrol somewhere else while the car is in the garage?
8. Is there an automatic system to prevent gasoline from catching fire or exploding in an accident. What does this cost?
9. I understand that the main ingredient in petrol is oil. Is it true that the extraction and refining of oil causes environmental problems as well as conflicts and major wars that over the last 100 years have cost millions of lives? Is there a solution to these problems?
10. I have heard that cars with internal combustion based engines are being banned to enter more and more cities around the world, as it is claimed that they tend to harm the environment and health of their citizens?? Is that true??
I may have more questions later, but these are the most important ones to me at the moment. Thank you in advance for your reply.
Click to expand...
 
I see that the usual media vultures are circling regarding EV's being to blame for the fire. This has happened previously, at a shopping centre in Cork, Ireland in 2019 and another at Stavanger Airport, Norway in 2020.

In both cases there were a mixture of ICE and EV cars involved.

In both cases the fire initially started in an Opel Zafira.

I have not yet found a report into the Cork fire but there is a lengthy one at https://risefr.com/media/publikasjo...re-in-stavanger-airport-cark-park-7-january-2 into the Stavanger fire. From an EV point of view this fire is probably the current 'worst case scenario' due to the much high ratio of EV's to ICE cars in that country.

For those that might be concerned in relation to EV's and fires this passage in the report that is worth highlighting:-

(Page 78)
There are no findings giving reason to believe that electric vehicles affected the fire development
differently than petrol-powered and diesel-powered vehicles would have done. No evidence was
found that fires in electric vehicles led to the pollution of nearby water bodies either.
 
EVsince2016 said:
All car insurance costs have gone up

www.theguardian.com

UK drivers shocked as car insurance costs soar by up to 90%

The price of petrol and diesel may have dropped but households are being hit by another rising cost
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
Click to expand...
This is very true insuance for everything appears to be on the increase but if you watch the BBC program form this morning the figures they are spouting is ICE vehicles around 25% increase but EVs 70% because of the increase cost of repairs lack of parts they even said the EVs sustain more damage due to there weight read into that what you will because we already know that but is not true
Les
 
The latest on the Luton airport fire is a number of people on Twitter having looked up the Range Rover Discovery diesel car and discovered that it is made in a hybrid version. They have therefore decided that the car that started the fire was a hybrid, and it was the battery that caused the fire (and the media are covering it up).

So far as I know, there has been absolutely nothing from any official outlet saying that it was a hybrid, and indeed the police said in clear that the car wasn't an EV. That isn't stopping them though.

Same people declaring that diesel isn't flammable, that you can't get it to burn by throwing a match or sparks on it, so this can't have been a diesel car. When it's pointed out that diesel cars catch fire fairly often, the retreat position is that they only do it while being driven, and not when parked up. It's impossible, you know. It was the lithium ion battery on the hybrid EV that caused this, end of, said one pundit. Also declaring that these batteries are notorious for exploding - "as most of them do".

It would be funny, but it's quite serious.

I did see one tweet, also entirely unconfirmed, saying that the car had only just arrived at the car park and was actually smoking when it was driven to the parking bay. It will be interesting to see if any more comes out on this.

(I even had one person declare that lithium is an extremely reactive metal. I pointed out that there is no lithium metal in an EV battery, it is in salt form, and as anyone who has done chemistry at school knows, the more reactive the metal the more stable the salt. Otherwise your salt cellar on your dining table would be extremely hazardous, what with all that sodium in it. I didn't get an answer.)
 
SimonS said:
I see that the usual media vultures are circling regarding EV's being to blame for the fire. This has happened previously, at a shopping centre in Cork, Ireland in 2019 and another at Stavanger Airport, Norway in 2020.

In both cases there were a mixture of ICE and EV cars involved.

In both cases the fire initially started in an Opel Zafira.

I have not yet found a report into the Cork fire but there is a lengthy one at https://risefr.com/media/publikasjo...re-in-stavanger-airport-cark-park-7-january-2 into the Stavanger fire. From an EV point of view this fire is probably the current 'worst case scenario' due to the much high ratio of EV's to ICE cars in that country.

For those that might be concerned in relation to EV's and fires this passage in the report that is worth highlighting:-

(Page 78)
There are no findings giving reason to believe that electric vehicles affected the fire development
differently than petrol-powered and diesel-powered vehicles would have done. No evidence was
found that fires in electric vehicles led to the pollution of nearby water bodies either.
Click to expand...

That's a keeper, thanks for that link.
 
Here's another good link. The Daily Mail isn't always bad!

www.dailymail.co.uk

Luton airport inferno comes five years after Liverpool Land Rover fire

The blaze at Luton airport yesterday also comes six months after Land Rover recalled several models of the Range Rover and Range Rover Sport to address issues that could potentially lead to fires.
www.dailymail.co.uk www.dailymail.co.uk

It details a rather worrying number of incidents where Range Rovers and Land Rovers caught fire, including the Liverpool car park fire a few years ago. Not a breath about EVs or batteries or hybrids.
 
If it was a diesel hybrid, then it could still have been started with a fire in the diesel system, which later caused the battery to burn. Or the battery could have gone up first.

Either way, the presence of an explosive tank of fuel is every bit as bad a catalyst as an EV battery.

Given numerous studies have shown ICE vehicles combust 10x-20x as often, this is clearly the priority problem that needs attention, especially as these studies don't typically take into account newer safer battery technologies.

ICE cars tend not to combust when cold, this is true, but everyone arriving in a car park has a hot engine, self evidently, so fires that start soon after switching off are common as are ICE fires while driving, which incidentally are far more hazardous to life since there far less time to get clear than in an EV battery fire.
 
Of course, but there is no credible source whatsoever stating that this was a hybrid. Only people on Twitter furious that it turned out not to be an EV, and who have therefore declared that it must have been a hybrid, and hence a battery fire, to save face.

I don't know if it's true or not, but one person said that he had spoken with the car's owner, who said that the car was smoking or smouldering when he drove it into the car park, and it burst into flames as he was walking away from it. What he was intending to do when he walked away is not recorded. I would have thought that if your car was already showing signs of bursting into flames as you approached a car park, then not actually going into the car park should be your first move. If you didn't notice anything until you were through the barrier, I don't know. The car looks parked. But that report could be a fabrication anyway. I would imagine the owner of that car wouldn't want to open his mouth or even identify himself as the owner to anyone but the police and the fire services.

I tried to find out the frequency of spontaneous fires in EV batteries (not caused by accidents) and couldn't separate them from fires occurring as a result of crashing the car, and fires in stationary house batteries. It seems to be genuinely rare.

As EVs replace ICE cars, these fires are going to get a lot less frequent. As more and more EVs have LFP batteries rather than NMC, they're going to get even less frequent.
 
Being kind, that's 735 / 5 = 147 EV fires per year, vs 10,000 ICE fires. (Or 9,853 ICE fires if EVs are included in the 10,000, so your ICE car is 67 times more likely to catch fire).
 

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