Graham Butcher

The other point worth mentioning here might be that with things mechanical, you can often work things out how they go together and how they work and can keep out of danger because you can see the obvious danger, but with a high voltage battery you don't have that luxury and of course with it being DC, there is always the danger of becoming locked onto the danger, whereas as AC will normally throw you off and across the room, so the danger of electrocution is far higher with attempting to DIY with a EV and battery voltages rising all the time to get higher ranges. Early EV's were 400V, newer ones are 800V and I suspect that they go even higher yet. With mechanical things you see, hear or feel the danger, with electricity, you get none of these warnings apart from feel, and often by the time you feel it, it is already too late to save yourself.

LMAO, just ignore the facts. I haven't said that EVs are not good, nor said that we shouldn't be driving them. Currently, they are an unknown factor and to be running around making wild statements like they are safer than ICE cars is BS. To be able to make that claim you require almost equal amounts ICE and EV's being used in the same fashion and over the same period of time that we have had ICE for. Then if EV's are actually subjected to fewer fires then the claim is justified. The Titanic was also supposed to be unsinkable and the future of shipping, how did that go? Remember also how diesel was supposed to be saving the planet and was the fuel of the future? Titanic - Wikipedia

This is precisely my point, that data is limited owing to the fact that EV cars are still only a very small percentage of the total number of cars in use and also are still very young and have not suffered the ageing process that the older more common ICE cars have, and it is well known that materials do deteriorate with age and heating/cooling process not just from the cars normal thermal cycle but also the seasonal thermal ageing process. So we are NOT comparing apples with apples and as the ICE cars decline and EV replace them, such incidents will become more commonplace and in a few years time, the figures may well show that the fire authorities fears and worries were indeed justified after all. Folks, please don't this to mean that I'm anti EV, I'm not, It just that we cannot make the claims that EV's are safer or indeed cleaner for the environment at this stage in their life cycle. All we can say with total confidence is that where they are being used, there is less pollution being emitted, but sadly that pollution may well be happening in other locations around the globe, so we MAY only be moving the problem elsewhere and that will be proven in due course, one way or the other.

I haven't watched the videos yet, but I will, unlike some who won't. But I take your point about the kidology involved. Here in Essex each year we host the annual Ride London cycle race held over two days with many roads being closed for the racecourse and of course we suffer badly with some disgustingly massive potholes and poor road surfaces due to lack of funding from central government. The roads used for the actual race will of course have been fully repaired, potholes nicely filled in, and poor roads resurfaced just days prior to the race taking place. The usual cyclists can take their life in their hands but those in the race, oh dear, have to be treated like gods, can't have those riders having to dodge potholes, can we.🙄

With respect, how on earth is this supposed to work? OnCharge | Overnight charging for electric fleet vans | Battery-As-A-Service for electric vehicles I watched the video, and it asks you to watch the full video, clicking on the link it says that the video is not available yet. This is clutching at straws, the video that is there shows a charger unit being slid into a van and the van driving home and that is it. Nothing about how the unit is to be used, or what happens to the unit in the morning, it would be too heavy to be unloaded by the van driver and left at the roadside for the collection so presumably, the driver has to return to the depot in the morning to unload the unit and then load the van. Why not leave the van at the depot overnight on charge???

@toot I post about all kinds of things, but EV does indeed pose a real risk and if we are not careful we will begin to get careless and actually believe that EV cars are less prone to fire than an ICE car. Nobody can actually say that with 100% confidence as EV cars are not as common as ICE, therefore there will be far more ICE cars catching fire, that is an obvious fact that I have yet to see any actual acceptance of within the confines of this forum. It seems to be the general view that ICE is more likely to catch fire than an EV by a massive factor, and that EV are the absolute opposite and are apparently the best thing since sliced bread. We have billions of ICE car and vehicles on the roads, stretched back for decades and there are many of older vehicles with poor maintenance and ancient and worn parts, rubber hoses perish and leak oil and fuel onto hot exhausts etc. How can you compare that against something that is still fairly new, the first fully electric car to go on sale of the modern era was 2008, and it is and is still a slow uptake by the public. It would have been a far slower uptake had it not been for various inducements by governments, which I don't think the ICE ever had got. Now with the predicted total ban of ICE powered cars, the EV market is being propelled into the mainstream market before it has stood the test of time. Fact is that ICE powered vehicles, all the fire depots worldwide know 100% how to handle these and can confidently deal with such incidents quickly and efficiently and once put out, stay put out. This is not the case with EV's as can be seen by the various fire brigades all trying to come to terms with the best solutions and there is currently NOT a universally accepted method for safely dealing with them on a national level, let alone worldwide. The plain truth is that until there is an even mix of EV and ICE cars of similar ages on the road, we will not know just how what the truth is. New cars of both types of motive power are extremely unlikely to catch fire due to their motive system, if they do catch fire it is more than likely going to be due to other factors, i.e, user error, DIY wiring, cigarette or maybe arson etc. But as the age and materials breakdown, the chances of fire, excluding those already mentioned, will increase naturally. So in essence, it is totally wrong for people to claim that there are far more ICE fires than there are EV fires, therefore EV's are inherently safer is just pure BS at this point in time, and if that if people believe than we are in for a rough ride.

Exactly what I have been saying, EV's can catch fire in the same fashion as ICE cars can and the method of dealing with it is exactly the same in both cases, no big surprise there, they all use wiring, plastics, foam, leather etc in the general construction of them. Diesel and petrol seldom get involved in the fire itself, and if it does, then foam generally puts it out pretty quickly. If a battery in EV gets involved in the fire itself, then it is a much harder fire and far hazardous to deal with and can take huge amounts of water to cool the battery enough to stop the chemical reaction before it can be extinguished and even then, they can reignite at anytime.

Oh dear, you have got confused with the Sydney Airport Fire video, this is entirely different to that one .🙄

Well that is a shame, you can skip past all that guff and get to the real good content, if I can manage it, I'm damn sure you can if you want to learn something. I keep my mind open to new concepts.

I know a lot of folk will take this the wrong way, but please, I beg you, play this video, he makes some sensible points and like, me is not anti EV at all.

I think it seems to be the same the same everywhere, pickup drivers seem to be taking over from Audi and BMW drivers when it comes to arrogance.

Yeah, I can see that would apply to some of them, but not the majority. I actually ended up with the Superb via a similar route as a company car driver, while many of my colleagues went for bigger more powerful engined cars like the Ford Mondeo's, Volvo XC90s, Audi's and BMW's. All those cars actually cost the company more in terms of the leases and yet at the end of their 3-year lease had far lower residuals. I checked to see if any are still on the road, and very few of them are. I'd love to know why, did they meet with a nasty accident or what, strangely enough, all but 1 of my Superb's are still on the road, and that includes my recently written off one, which has just been granted a MOT.

All of your observations beg the question just why are there so many of these big beasts, regardless of their drive train, it has to be one of snobbery I feel, one-upmanship, look at me in my big ultra expensive car, just because I'm better than you and thus I can afford to let everyone know it.👿

All this increased HP and performance that EV's have is also having the effect of pushing up insurance premiums, not only because of the increased likelihood of a car being written off if there is a chance that the battery might have suffered damage in the accident, but also because of the increased performance in acceleration terms over that of an ICE car of the same HP rating. We really do need to look at restricting the performance of cars full stop, we don't have the roads capable of using the performance, so it makes a mockery out of having all of that power, and that goes for ICE and also EV powered cars

Well, I watched this video and saw nothing that showed how the Renault Zoe dominated the Nürburgring, it was constantly being overtaken by others, blatant clickbait and nothing else.

That surely is only because there has never been any real incentive for the ICE designers to do anything else. No legal or governmental pressure has been applied to them. Governments have been perfectly happy to keep taking the massive taxation that has been applied to oil and as long as the money was rolling in, why would they wish to disrupt it. The only real times the ICE designers ever really made great strides in the engine performance has been in F1 and at times when there has been an oil crisis which forced them to look at increasing economies. I suspect that big oil has invested very heavily in the EV side of things, especially on the battery side of things as they can see the opportunity to make billions with far fewer people involved, therefore even greater profits, no oil refineries, no great oil tankers required, maybe easier extraction of the required minerals, follow the money. It is all to easy to swallow the stuff we are all being told about the EV being a magic bullet and the answer to the planet's problems, but is it? If we all had to live with the mines used for extraction of the rare minerals for the batteries and all the toxic waste and poisoned water supplies as result of the toxic lakes, the hazardous living conditions that people in those areas have to endure, the poverty, poor wages paid to the workers, even young children etc, would we still think that the EV's were a good thing? These are the side effects of EV's that we and most people do not get to see or have to put up with all we ever get to see are the good side of things and is this not just really a massive case NIMBY syndrome?? Man created the climate change, man could also reverse the change, but the problem there is of course no commercial gain to be had from doing so, once again we are back to the money. Even if there were zero toxins coming from the adoption of EV's, it will not cure the climate change, it will still be there. What we need to do as a planet is to restore the forests, make the planet as a whole far greener with actual growing plants, that will convert CO2 into oxygen. Also develop processes that actually take CO2 out of the atmosphere and restore the ozone layer, yes it would cost money and nobody would be able to make a profit from such actions, but we need to stop the relentless pursuit of amassing as much wealth as it is possible and locking it away in various tax heavens that the top few elites love to do. Maybe if they had paid their fair share of taxes over the years, their taxes could have been used for the purposes of tackling reversing the damage we as a species has done.

@toot Not to mention all the ridiculous EV's that are coming out on the market with upwards of 250hp in the UK, where are you ever going to be able to use all of that available power here with the speed limits coming down all the time, utter madness.

I don't think that any government, anywhere in the world, were elected purely on the strength of their plan to ban the sale of ICE cars, circumstances change all the time.

Why, the EU have also decided on 2035, way before the UK did?

I mentioned this yesterday.

True, the Nissan Qashai is only 12V, and the real reason for Telsa opting to go with 48V is to reduce the amount of copper needed for the cars wiring as they can understand that we are using loads of copper in EV cars which puts a strain on the available amounts of copper and also of course, it also allows them to make weight savings as the cables can be a lot thinner as a result.

I love soft suspension, it forms part of the luxury for me, I hate to be shaken up when going over normal roads, the Passat was up to the introduction of the Superb the go to car for me but on long trips, that could be tiring due to the lack of space. The Chrysler 300 was always out of my grasp as a company car user as it was marketed as being an equivalent to the more upmarket cars like Mercedes-Benz, Jaguars, BMW's etc. Interestingly, the 300 used a Mercedes-Benz E class (W211) class floorpan.

I went from VW Passats onto the Mk1 Superb, and TBH I thought it looked way better than the Passat and with is extra length, also rode far better as well. Yes I know that many of the motoring journalists at the time criticized them both as being dull and boring in the twisty country roads, lacked feel etc, but I never had any such experiences, and TBH, you shouldn't be whizzing around on those roads as they are the worst possible roads for enthusiastic driving unless you know that you have the road all to yourself like so many of those journalists did.

Well, I can't vouch for anything really other than Škoda Superb's as they have been my choice of car for the 19 years and really suit my needs of a comfortable car suitable for long journeys, fast and efficient enough for my needs, both as a company car and private car, that needs to carry 5 adults in comfort especially when 4 of those adults are at least 6' 4" tall and 2 of those are also well-built. I don't need to have a superfast accelerating VRS type of performance etc. So for all my requirements, the Škoda Superb ticks all the right boxes. It looks great, handles great, goes fast enough, has enough luxury, has space that puts many cars from classes above it to shame, is reliable, holds its value well (unlike Audi's) etc.

Oh, how can I be a decade behind the curve when my car is a 2016 model, it is also a VW group car, being that it is a Skoda, it has an ECO setting and part of that setting is the coasting mode, where the engine disconnects from the wheels when I lift my foot off the throttle, providing of course, that the car is actually going faster than the engine speed, as soon as the car is going as slow as the engine the drive reconnects as normal automatically. So explain how my car is 2016 and this is 2013 and that makes my car just 7 years old and yet you claim that I'm a decade behind the curve, does not compute.