Graham Butcher

I have seen some rapid chargers that have no cover so that again is a red herring . When you take a car out on a road test when you are considering the purchase of any new car, they don't give the option of living with the car for a few days before making your mind up, do they? The closest I ever got to that was when I was driving a Passat as my company car and was already on my third in 9 years when the Superb was released in the UK and Škoda UK actually offered me one on an extended 2-day test drive through a Škoda dealer I was friends with, and now I'm on 5th Superb.

I don't see the relevance about not having had any prior experience of EV ownership makes to the discussion at all, that is a complete red herring or are thinking that if I had, then I would become another EV footsoldier in favour of EV's. I have already said that if I were to drive one, that I fully expect that I'd love it because of its instant torque and its quietness or did you not see that post in reply to toot. I don't see anything personally to hate, as long as it had conventional switches and knobs and none that touch screen malarkey which can be extremely hit-and-miss at times, even with market leaders like Apple products. The biggest single drawback is not having the ability to home charge. With this video, yes it is great to see that happening but from experience having been to many exhibitions at the NEC both as a visitor and also as an exhibitor, is that that facility be fully blocked for the entire duration when there is an major event taking place which would mean that anyone just passing be might be out of luck. It is to be welcomed though I admit, it is a step in the right direct but at 85p KW it is expensive. He also said in the video that the chargers had a canopy over them, and yet he showed row upon row of 7KW chargers that were out in the open?

Well, I think that is because, like you and the others here are doing, going by local events near us all. In this area the cars mainly seem to be Fiestas, Range Rovers, Jags, Mercedes Benz and BMW's that are the ones being nicked, and often being caught on CCTV doing it. Yes joyriding is thankfully becoming a thing of the past, no longer do I come across on a regular basis the burnt shell of someone's once pride and joy and that is no doubt thanks to the improved security of modern cars. As to second-hand parts prior to the internet, all of my parts came from the dealers for the cars that I owned or did work on for friends and family. Only once did I source a second-hand part, and that was an engine to replace a seized one in a Transit van that I rescued just before the company that owned it went bankrupt. That engine I took out of a V4 Zephyr that had suffered a rear end shunt and that came from a local scrapyard.

Down this end of the country, that does not seem to be the situation at all. Skoda still seems to be largely snubbed by lots of people. I have a family member working in the crown court and never heard anything that being mentioned in courts. Maybe we shouldn't draw conclusions between parts of the country.

Yes, I've seen reports about bonnets and bumpers being removed, so that might account for the fiestas in my area, but I've yet to hear of a focus being taken, maybe it is the sporty versions that are being targeted?

The point about gas v bev vehicles in that report that I found to be very interesting was a comment made in the comments section quoted below, which as I pointed in a much earlier post ties in very nicely with my own finding when I was working with buses where the rear-engined buses from other depots were having engine fires where the identical buses that I was looking after did not suffer from any fires. The difference I discovered between them, when the bus company asked to go and have a look at what was happening at these other depots. What I discovered was that they were all due to a general lack of keeping the engines clean. The engines were horizontal beneath the floor and mounted at the rear to keep prop shafts etc as short as possible. Oil would get spilled when doing maintenance, jubilee clips would work loose or even break if over tightened and oil could slowly seep out and sit in small puddles on the engine castings and this would get overheated, and catch fire and as the engine covers that formed the flooring above the engine was made from wood this would also catch fire and then the whole of the rear end of the bus would be destroyed in the fire. The alternator, the starter motor was also located on the top of the horizontal mounted engine and to make my life easier as the auto electrical engineer for the garage, I would take the bus to the high pressure cleaner before driving it over inspection pits, so the mechanics could get to work on the mechanicals while I did all the electrical work. As a result, the engines on the buses and coaches never had this build up of oil on them to overheat and burst into fire. These other garages then started to implement the regular engine washes, which they hadn't done before because they had to remove the covers and the washing splashed the bus seats etc. But the Buses also had a thorough cleaning by a team of cleaners, so the splashing didn't matter anyway once the service had been completed, and prior to the final road test and sign off by myself. Brett Bellmores December 29, 2022 at 6:15 am ” Less than 2 percent start in the fuel tank or lines.” “Most fires originate within the vehicle, such as a broken fuel line coming into contact with an overheated engine.” This is a common misunderstanding of what goes on in a car fire. Car fires are normally initiated by a large OIL leak, not a fuel leak. (Diesel cars can be an exception here.) Ignition of fuel typically happens after the oil starts the fire, if it happens at all. (Remember, the fuel is usually stored at the opposite end of the vehicle from the engine, on purpose.) The ignition temperature of gasoline is way above its boiling point; (535F vs 158F for summer gas.) If you leak gasoline onto a hot surface, the exhaust manifold, say, evaporation keeps it from igniting unless an ignition source (Open flame, sparks.) is already present. By contrast, the ignition temperature of oil is roughly the same as its boiling point: Oil spilled on a hot surface will ignite before it boils away. So almost all “car-B-q’s” start as oil fires, not fuel fires. And most of them stay that way.

Fair point, but the point I was making is that any car, given the right conditions, can be the target for crime, regardless of its type of motive power. Older cars are less likely to be targetted by organised criminals, they want recent models, especially if there is a shortage of those models available as there was during the pandemic and the following few months as manufacturers struggled to get production back up again.

I never made the distinction about EVs Hybids or ICE. I personally and I think any sane person would want to have their possible second biggest purchase of their life after their house, close to hand for security reasons. Many of those cars you have seen and I have seen them as well in places all over the UK are only there because maybe the owner is somewhere else altogether on a business trip or lives close by but does not have anywhere else to park their car and doesn't use it very often, who knows the reason I don't.

This is getting cyclic now, I posted about the thefts and how that risk is elevated many times over if your EV has to be left in some remote charging spot overnight and that it is now somehow wrong to want to try and protect your expensive purchase by keeping it close to hand? I think I'll keep out of the EV discussions if anything remotely out of line with EV owner's beliefs cannot even be discussed in an unbiased and open fashion, which is precisely what I'm attempting to do as I already said, it will almost certainly not affect me so I am therefore 100% not biased either way.

I mentioned fords as they have never struck me as being particularly desirable, having had a few myself over the years most people think it only really happens to more desirable high value cars like Range Rovers etc, when in fact today it could be any car that has suddenly, for whatever reason, become in short supply and people are prepared to pay over the odds for one. I don't know any more about the van ask the LFB for more details?

@toot You asked about EV cars and criminals, well this video clearly shows that yes, EV cars are being targeted and exported overseas in shipping containers. Here in Essex, they even targetting Ford Fiesta's with most weeks at least one being taken in the city.

Just discovered this footage of an actual BEV van at a hotel carpark near to Heathrow Airport in July this year. Then there was this terrible scene of CNG powered bus . Then this electric bus in Paris 12,710,678 views Apr 30, 2022 #elonmusk #vixx #tesla An Electric Bus Caught Fire After Battery Explosion in Paris A video recording shows the start of the fire which completely consumed an electric RATP bus on Friday 29 April. The incident caused no injuries. The bus burst into flames within seconds. This is what can be seen on the video that captured the very beginning of the fire of an electric vehicle of the RATP in Paris , this Friday, April 29. In the images, we can see a small explosion occur on the roof of the bus, where the batteries are located, followed by huge flames that spread to the entire body, at breakneck speed. This line 71 bus caught fire in the 13th arrondissement of Paris in the morning, mobilizing around thirty workers, according to the firefighters contacted by Le Parisien. It is a 100% electric vehicle, from the Bolloré brand Bluebus 5SE series, like the bus that burned down at the beginning of April . This afternoon, the RATP decided to temporarily withdraw from circulation the 149 Bolloré electric bluebuses that circulate on its network.

That is why I say you need home charging to make it viable here

Hmm. Thank you for sort of confirming what I've said before. As to Morrisons, just about a mile away from me, I think they have 2 chargers and IIRC when they were installed they used to free for people shopping in Morrisons, then they stopped that, and currently it seems when I shop there, these chargers are nearly always empty. Now I'm not sure if that is because they are now charging a lot, or if its just the time of day when I go there, or if there are broken. As I currently don't have the need of their services so I've never bothered to look any further. Q park in Chelmsford has 8 chargers only and these are on level 1 of the multi-storey car park so you, although you may only after a top-up of your battery in order to continue your journey etc, you also have to pay parking for that duration of your charge and so that is incurring additional costs over and above the KW hour rate of the charger, so less than ideal again. It might be that Chelmsford has always been known as a town for the wealthy and has been a conservative town/city for as long as I can remember, it would take a miracle to happen for them to lose this seat in any election. It took McDonald's loads of lobbying to get their first branch opened up here as the council did not want to risk getting the streets littered with their discarded food cartons etc., now we have no fewer than 5 branches here.

@toot No I don't think that all, when ever I need parts for my cars or those for friends whose cars I was working on I always went to the main dealers and purchased new parts that came in official sealed boxes with receipts. I never took a chance of second-hand parts from dodgy geezers. Funny, I thought that Scotland was the one of the better parts of UK, have I been wrong all this time?

Exactly and this video shows how they operate and can be traced and just how quickly they can steal your vehicle chop it up, sell on the parts and be off on their toes to other locations all within the space of hours. The final location in this video is near to me.

You're making that assumption, not me, I'm saying that any car regardless of its means of propulsion could be the target of car crime. And I'd much rather have that expensive car closer to me at home than leave it unattended in some strange space away from where I can keep a watchful eye on it from time to time. That's it, plain and simple, no conspiracy theory or anything, I and many others would feel far happier if they could look out of their window or on their CCTV monitor and see the car is safe and sound on their drive or outside their house.

No, I wasn't just talking about EV cars on charge, I was talking about any car left unattended for a period of time and if they can come and steal a car from your driveway when there is always a higher risk that they will be detected by yourself, or someone walking/driving down the road and scaring them off, then they will have a field in a charging park with almost zero chance on any accidentally stumbling on them. I also never said that EV cars are of more interest to criminals, but they will be as they gain popularity, that you can be sure of.

I fail to see what benefit there is of me trying an EV is going to make to my point of view, I know that I would love the way that it drives, the sheer quietness of it etc. I'm not making these points out of how it affects me, as I expect that by the time I have no option but go electric, I'll either be deemed too old and doddery to drive or I'll have departed this mortal coil.🤣 What people are failing to accept is that I'm effectively standing outside out of my circle and taking a long hard look at the realities of going EV without the emotions of either being wrapped up in it because I have already jumped into EV ownership and feel I have to defend that step, neither do I realistically feel it's ever going to affect me directly. That puts me in a unique position where I can view things with zero influences on me, which is something that few here can actually claim as they have already made the switch and so have little understanding of where I'm coming from and to a large part are possibly now defending their decision or those that can see they almost certainly guarantee that the EV position will impact their life at some point in the future. If it helps, you can all think of me as the little child in the Hans Christian Anderson tale of the Emperor's New Clothes, who was not bound. by the normal conventions and fears that adults have The Emperor's New Clothes - Wikipedia Perhaps if more people could also step out of their comfort zone and look back and take a fresh look at things from a different perspective the planet might look a like a far nicer place than it does today.

That is not always the case, my car has a tracker fitted but it does not alert me to the fact that is either been broken into or stolen, it relies on me noticing that the car has been stolen and alerting the tracker company so that they can broadcast a signal to switch the tracker into alert mode whereupon it sends out a current GPS signal so that the relevant people con converge on that location and attempt recovery. If the devices was constantly sending out signals, the thieves could hone in on its actual location within the vehicle by intercepting that signal, ripping the tracker out and then relocating the vehicle to a new untraceable location

Well, there have been a few TV documentaries and there are also some tracker companies with their own YouTube channels that I think are well worth your while researching when time permits.

Exactly, that was what I claimed the position to be when the solar company told me that, and while I have been in the industry all my life that has always been the case. Now just like the railways, since privatisation the lines have become somewhat blurred and there is now no longer a single authority that covers all aspects, it is a real can of worms and a living hell for these trapped with in it. I am currently fighting to get an isolator fitted to enable the work to be done, problem is that in order to do that, the fuse has to be pulled out and that takes us full circle again back to the original problem and nobody wants to take ownership of that aspect. I have discovered that my supplier was sitting on well over £1,000 of my money as I have a budget plan with them and that money was increasing with each direct debit they took from my bank and that was for my gas supply., They were perfectly happy to hold onto my money and would have done so had I not probed about and asked questions.

You may have a point about the street chargers, apart from where these are outside people's houses there will be the A holes who will not move their cars out to allow a neighbour to access the charger and before you or any else says it, yes I know that they don't own that parking spot but equally there is nothing anyone can do to make them move it either, not even the police I have tried that avenue when one of neighbours with 5 cars parked across my drive while I was out for the day, and they did not want to know as it was not blocking the highway.

Don't you fall into the same trap as many others do. The truth of the toe rags is that tend to fall into 2 groups, the opportunist who is more interested in might be in car or the boot and those that are stealing cars to order. Nine times out of ten they steal the car, drive a few miles away to a quiet location and systematically tear the car apart looking for any tracker devices. If they find one, they pull it out toss it, change the plates over and drive off safe in the knowledge that they aren't being tracked. What happens to these vehicles then depends on if they are cars that have a high value overseas, or cars / commercial vehicles that have a high value for their parts here in the UK. If the former, they are quickly placed in shipping containers and shipped overseas, if the latter they are within hours stripped of the valuable parts and the body shell chopped up and disposed off. Stolen cars have been put on sales at dealers overseas without even any attempt to hide its origins as once it is there they is zero hope getting anything done about and the local authorities are not even bothered about it either. On a personal level, can I ask you if you get some free charging as a result of your disability, or is that just something that happens in Scotland? I have yet to see any free chargers in my area of England at least.

@toot Sorry, I didn't mean to make you feel uncomfortable about your personal circumstances, if I did, then I sincerely apologize for that. I can understand why you do stay, I thought you stayed because you needed to have a charged car for the following day etc. Here in this part of England, there are loads of CCTV but that does not mean that your vehicle is going to be safe as thieves have learnt that the police do not have the resources to follow up or even react if something is seen on these CCTV cameras and monitors. I have links to the local neighbourhood social media group and almost daily there are reports of cars being stolen in view of CCTV equipment, similarly there are cases of being physically and brutally beaten up, in the high-street which is awash with surveillance cameras and just 500yds from the police station and, yet these attacks go on for approaching 30 minutes before emergency services arrive on the scene, so that is of little comfort to car owners in England, hopefully Scotland performs much better in that regard.