Graham Butcher

Nope, I disagree, at one time it was almost impossible to go to any car park, country lane, or remote country location, woods etc without seeing loads of burnt car shells, I have not seen any for over a decade, nor do you see any residue left over tell-tale signs like badly burned scorched ground/road/concrete.

Why are you going to tell me that this joyriding is still a big thing up in Scotland then?

The more professional thief agreed, but I was purely talking about the craze that started in the 1980s of youngsters stealing a car, driving it around for an hour or two before dumping and cremating it so any evidence left behind such as fingerprints etc was totally destroyed so they could not be linked to the crime other than being caught on CCTV (not so popular back then) or eyewitness reports.

I had cooled front seats on my 2013 L&K, and they blew air out of the pinholes in the squab and back rest.

Well a lot of the ICE fires were of course the results of the infamous joyriders trying to destroy anything that could link them to the theft of the cars for pleasure (no pleasure for their owners though). Joyriding was a problem in the 1980s though to the 2000s which was primarily when the car manufacturers improved their security and started to fit alarms and immobilisers making it more difficult for the casual thief to gain entry and hot-wire the ignition.

I just watched this fire blanket demonstration, claimed to be for EV fires where the batteries have gone into runaway condition. My thoughts on the video are that although they claim the batteries are in the thermal runaway stage, I seriously doubt that. In the cases where that has happened and has been caught on CCTV, the batteries always vent gases from below the car sideways and those gases are highly visible and when they ignite are like blowtorches, rapidly setting fire to anything within the reach of the flames. The flames in this video are like those of a conventional ICE car, i.e., they are going upwards as there is no pressure being applied. So at that point it is exactly the same conditions as any other car fire, so the blanket would be perfect for all car fires. That suggests that the blanket was introduced before the batteries got hot enough, and that is perfectly OK, but it will not solve the problem once the batteries have entered that runaway state. It also shows that as long as the fire Dept can reach car fires quick enough, then they stand a very good chance of preventing the batteries becoming part of the fire. Fact is that most car fires will be the result of either oil dripping onto hot exhausts, overheated brakes, faulty wiring or something happening inside the car, like a dropped cigarette or just plain arson, and an EV car is going to be no different and will be like that for 99% of fires. It is the 1% or less of fires that will have the batteries involved and the real giveaway as far as I have observed in the videos, apart from the sidewards jets of fire, is the colour of the smoke, black is what you expect from normal fires, white or grey smoke is coming from the batteries electrolyte and at that point, its game over, the runaway has started. EV Fire Blanket Demonstration - CR4 Discussion Thread (globalspec.com)

How about battery swapping stations instead of charge points? Will swapping out electric car batteries catch on? - BBC News

We had a similar situation near to London a few years ago at a scrapyard beneath the M1. M1 fire prompts motorway bridge review, says Philip Hammond - BBC News

Yes, 1 battery removed due to suffering physical damage was left out for days apparently and then decided to catch fire on its own, and set alight to the car it came from and 4 others, all were supposed to be MG EVs. The stories were not all from the Daily Fail, but a variety of newspapers and also on Australian TV news. The real juicy detail was in the video, not the articles which if they really wanted to do scaremongering, left out the terrifying bits which were included in the video, which I thought was a well researched and very well-balanced presentation if anyone could be bothered to watch and listen to what is said would discover. But why let truth and fairness all round get in the way eh?

Correct, exactly what the dude in the video said as well, and even included a clip of that fireman saying the same thing as the text states 🙄

If there was a link to the news article, I'd have posted, but as it appeared to a TV news channel that broadcast a video clip that someone filmed on a mobile phone that drew this to the presenters attention, I'm unable to give a link to the text as the presenter clearly states that the mains stream media completely failed to report on it. All of this information is there in the video, you either watch it or ignore it, but don't shoot the messenger. But I have done a Google search as anyone can and found this. Sydney Airport car fire: Five vehicles destroyed after electric car's lithium ion battery ignites (msn.com) Five cars destroyed at Sydney airport after luxury electric vehicle’s battery ignites | Sydney | The Guardian EV disaster as devastating fire sparked by faulty battery completely destroys five cars at major airport | The Irish Sun (thesun.ie) Also found these links to other battery related fires from the same source. Garbage truck in Padbury Perth destroyed by fire after battery found in rubbish | Daily Mail Online Fire at Broadbeach Waters house could have been caused by lithium battery | Daily Mail Online

This report has just come in regarding a fire at car rental depot at Sydney Airport and I think contains a lot of good points within it.

The interesting part of that article is this short extract "Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) is emitted by gas heating boilers and cars, and the main hotspots are next to busy city streets." which can be readily rubbished by looking at the actual recorded stats for each monitoring station and then examining its location and some of highest readings are not next to busy city streets, but by large industrial plants like steel works etc, some of which are located next the sea and away from busy city roads, just roads going to very small local fishing docks and industrial sites, others are located right in the midst of housing estates etc. The common dominator there is the huge amount of gas being consumed by industrial plants and cookers/boilers. Take an air quality tester, stick it into the N02 range, offer it up to a vehicle's tailpipe, and then take it indoors and start cooking with gas in the kitchen and measure the levels in your house, the readings for the tailpipe would be in the green and safe, in the house, they would not be in the green but would be in the hazardous to health readings. This would also explain why the readings seem to be higher on really hot days and in the cooler months of the year, lower, as people open their house windows to allow a cooler breeze in, and the N02 escapes outside, and also people still running gas boilers for hot water, baths etc and boilers N02 is vented directly to the outside, hence why the readings can be seen to be higher on some estates than busy city roads.

Good point, but maybe we should be asking government more questions about the low emission zones that springing up all over the place when the air quality is already rated as good. We should be helping more of the Third World countries clean up their act, and then everybody would benefit. Air is free to go wherever it wants to go, who has never had their cars covered in ash/sand etc that has carried in the wind from countries many thousands of miles away? The same goes for pollution. We pay attention to the amount of pollution that we pump out year-on-year, it reduces and yet it hardly makes any difference, even with ULEZ, the report that cost TFL hundreds of thousands to get produced indicated that all of his measures would amount to no real difference in the air quality because it is already of a high standard. Yes it has days when the air is better than others but I suspect that if anyone were to really examine the winds etc on the days that the readings here in the UK were higher than normal, I'd expect to see that the pollution has been carried in the winds from somewhere else to here and not of local production as is being claimed. World's Most Polluted Countries in 2022 - PM2.5 Ranking | IQAir

There will be more can kicking yet I think.

Yeah, the post that you responded to was an old one from the 10th and somehow the mobile phone managed to insert it into the reply I did to @toot

Bloody mobile phone, I have no idea how that other post from the 10th got there, give me a proper computer and keyboard any day ☺️

I know of tradesmen who have been given electric vans which are not capable of lugging their tools etc up the hills in their area so refuse to use them. Glad that you admit it needs resolving, but how do you propose it is done, flatten all tower blocks, level all old unsuitable streets full of terraced houses many of which are barely any wider than a cars length, and rebuild millions of house with drives? The point that I was making was that quoting what you pay for home charging does NOT those that can't and that cannot see a way that they own an EV. Showing that there is a good supporting structure and making public charging no more expensive is a solution to the problem. Like I said, who fills their ICE at home, nobody, so make an EV appear to be as easy and no more expensive than a conventional car to buy, refuel, and run. Geez.....

Correct, people have to get there to do the work, I have had to drive from Chelmsford to Newcastle on Tyne and back before on the same day for work, this does in deed happen, maybe it's not expected where @J.R. lives but here it most certainly is.

The Nissan Qashqai I had for 2 months while awaiting a decision on the final value of my written off Superb was a Mild Hybrid and like your Renault, was unable to drive on pure electric mode, it only gave a bit of extra acceleration when stepping on the gas for a snappy overtake or pulling away from rest, after the hybrid battery been charged. etc. I thought the whole system left me underwhelmed, it was not very satisfactory TBH. I was trained to be as light on the brakes as possible, I was trained by a bus driver and that is how they were taught. When pulling up, as the speed scrubs away almost to zero, to ease off on the brake pedal slightly to avoid a jolt when the car comes to a halt, in order to give passengers a smooth ride and also to avoid any passengers who might be standing, or walking towards the exit of the bus being made unsteady on their feet. So when I tried that in the Qashqai, the system thought I was pulling away and the electric motor would kick in and try to propel the car forward. I was glad to see the back of the Mild Hybrid to be perfectly honest.

Surely using a ICE to drive a generator then using the generator's output to charge batteries and also drive an electric motor is less efficient than a mild hybrid?

What would you have to do, to make the Etech drive on electric for three quarters or more of the time and increase its MPG and in doing so, reduce its emissions? I tend to agree with this as well, most of the world is adopting this date as it will take time to get the infrastructure in place and ramp up power generation to meet the increased demand.

Much the same thing really with ICE cars as well, very few actually get close to their claimed range.

That new 3008 car looks nice but I think that 21" curved display would drive my local dealers MOT tester nuts as he couldn't mention as an advisory to remove items obscuring his vision. 😉

Why is that these people seem to hate Tesla's, car envy or what? The world is full of bleeding muppets.