Graham Butcher

Yes, those buses that catch fire tend to be those with engines mounted at the rear or slung beneath the floor in a horizontal plain. I can't remember ever when there was a front-engined bus that caught fire. That I suspect is because the driver is right there and detect if there is anything happening with the engine and can stop and shut if off much quicker. With rear and underfloor engines, there are so far away from the driver that it is impossible for them to know if anything is wrong until it stops powering the bus or fire breaks out and someone alerts the driver. As a person who did his apprenticeship with the National Bus Company I can hazard a guess why they catch fire as we had a few catch fire, not those in my care (which the largest garage/depot in the county but many did catch fire in smaller depots where I can assume from I saw of the overall level of maintenance which was IMV poor. The reason tends to be very poor air flow around the engines, diesel and oil leaks, and there are many areas where that can build up a small puddle over time and there is also a lot of dirt and dust etc that settles in these areas and is trapped by the moisture and this effectively becomes and thermal insulator to prevent the engine losing heat though its block etc so the oil/dust mixture heats up of the course of a hard days work and the large alternator tends to mounted close by these areas, and it just needs a few sparks from loose terminals etc and the oil/duct mixture slowly ignites and it grows until it is too late and engulfs the bus. On the buses under my watch at my depot, I used to drive them to bus wash area and remove the floor access panels inside the bus and the rear engined ones, I'd take off the side covers as well raising the rear access hatch and then I'd give them a good wash down with a pressure washer to endure that the build up never happened and that engines lost their furry insulation layers.

For the record, neither did any of my 38 lithium powered devices that my family and I have, such as many phones, many tablets, power drills, torches, video cameras, portable games consoles, digital cameras and also pieces of electronic test equipment. They all have electronic BMS's built in them to prevent batteries getting overcharged, overheating etc., but like all things electronic, they can and do develop faults and nothing lasts forever in the electronic field.

Back on point again, I don't think anybody has actually stated that EVs spontaneously caught fire anymore than ICE vehicles do but when they do, If the battery is involved then it becomes much more complicated to deal with. If the battery does not become a part of the fire, then it is almost like any other car fire, starve it of oxygen, fire goes out, except there is the risk with high voltages.

Hopefully nobody doing that 🔥

Burning gas is not good either, check out the PM figures in the vicinity of boiler or cooker, far worse than standing by a main road.

That has always been my belief that by far the worst offenders are the commercial vehicles. It makes sense as they haul heavy loads, are the least aerodynamic and tend to be in use the whole working day. Cars on the otherhand mainly do relatively short runs twice a day and are then parked up for long periods.

Last post on this with you, just go back, re-read what I wrote and watch those 2 videos I posted and actually pay close attention to what he says, and you should then hopefully understand that neither he nor I are saying anything conclusive other than that car in the photo is a Porsche Taycan, if you cannot decipher what the car is or was from the photo of the shell and the photo of the car side by side then that is your problem, not mine. I also said that assuming the photo was not a fake, but the only other car ship that could have photographed on, which had a fire was the Felicity Ace, and that has sunk, so its highly unlikely that it was that ship. YES we will have to wait for the official report to be published, and I respectfully suggest that you do the same thing instead of leaping the EV defence every time as if I said the was started by an EV which is not what I said, just go back and check and be honest with yourself.

I know, the point I was making is that we have come a long way from the poorly designed and heavily polluting cars we used to drive, and they are still getting better. I did say I that I would hate to know how much pollution those early cars were producing

@wyx087Look, if you are not even going to consider anything said about EV's that does not agree with your viewpoint then I'm done with this discussion with you, its already dragged Colin into this and I'm sure there are other members getting a bit fed up with the tooing and froing, lets agree to disagree, thats it I'm all done, over and out.

So are you now saying that you never said this wyx087 Members 1.6k Location: N London Model: Tesla Model Y LR EV; Nissan Leaf 24kWh EV Posted 14 hours ago https://cleantechnica.com/2023/08/17/a-ship-carrying-electric-cars-is-on-fire-we-must-run-and-tell-the-king/ So the uncontrollable fire on the ship had nothing to do with EV's. Quote All I'm doing is correcting the misinformation you were posting about it. As mentioned in the videos, unless that photo is a fake, that photo proves that your statement was incorrect, the car shown is a Porsche Taycan, a 100% EV car. If you watched and listened to the videos and also read what I wrote, there is claim anywhere that EV car was the cause, that is yet to be determined, but it is an undeniable fact that EV cars were involved in the fire, they were not all on another level of that ship and 100% untouched by the fire, which is what you are implying. This is what you claimed that you were doing to my posts, but nowhere did I ever say that the fire started by an EV, I just said the involvement of EV in the fire made putting the fire out impossible, don't me that you still don't think that they were involved.😣

I'd like to think that your right, maybe the powers to be will come to their senses and see that it looks like a bad move. I'm not anti EV but I cannot see that will solve the climate crisis, its IMV just moving the pollution away from the tail pipe and concentrating it elsewhere.

To give some ideas of the great strides modern ICE engines have made over the years, my first ever car when I passed my driving test was a 1957 Hillman Minx of just 1390cc with a top speed of 77mph, a 0-60miles time of 25.4 secs, power output of 47HP and did just 26mpg, and I'd hate to think about the amount of pollution it and cars of the era were spewing from their tailpipes. Today I have a 2017 Skoda Superb, 1968cc top speed of 137mph and giving out 150HP, 0-62mph of 8.9 secs and gives up to 71mpg with a Euro 6 engine and all the time engines are getting more efficient and Euro 7 engines are now coming out, pushing the economy up even further and pollution levels down even lower with increased HP and torque outputs. Air quality has been vastly improved and there are exciting new developments being introduced all the time. If we stopped destroying vast amounts of forests and actually planted more trees and plants and stopped tarmacing or concreting every bit of green spaces, left proper grass verges at roadsides etc along with the reduction of tailpipe emissions with modern cars, stopped making and selling cars with engines huge great engines (don't forget we have a national speed limit) we will go a long way to reverse the climate change surely?

Excellent, a sane and savvy person who can see both sides of things and not get excited, well done. I do think that EVs have place and might well be the perfect answer for the future but have a long way to go yet. However I do not think that new ICE cars cannot can longer be sold from 2030 onwards is a good move. A better move might have been to put a ban on ICE cars over 2.5litres. Anyone wanting a performance car would need to look at EVs and the biggest polluters would be drastically reduced.

Did you actually watch both videos right through?

Exactly, claiming that EVs started it or not are NOT actually helping their cause, but unless that photos was faked, they were in involved. The world's fire brigades as I posted before can see that there is a real problem which is not going to get any better, only get worse, as more and more EVs take to the road to the point where they are not the minority any more but become the majority and if nothing is done to improve their safety that a real massive problem is just waiting to happen.

You might want to reconsider your post and your statement, "So the uncontrollable fire on the ship had nothing to do with EV's. " When you watch this video from an actual real life motoring correspondent, and I'd be inclined to believe his expert knowledge over that of a German Politician as quoted in the article that you referred to. Very often politicians resemble the main stream media in as much as they have a hidden agenda and will often twist the truth to suit that agenda. In fact, I have seen that photo that is shown in the video before, I'm pretty sure that it has been posted here in this thread, and I was a bit concerned by it then, but was unable to work out why I was uncertain until this guy points it out. Strangely enough, I have since looked for that photo here, but it no longer seems to here, so maybe the poster has removed it? Once again, before everyone dog piles me, I'm not saying that the fire was started by a EV, but that it certainly appears that EVs were involved in the fire and that would explain why the fire was able to ravage the entire length of the ship and why it was so difficult to put out (assuming the CO2 system was deployed). All these answers should be revealed in the official report when it comes out, which is often a few years later. But for now it is looking like a massive whitewashing job and cover up job. When it was first announced, the amount of EVs was played down to 25, when in fact there were 498 and also, all the other brands of cars were able to provide details of their exposure to the fire but not VW, that seems to be odd. I offer 2 videos for consideration, and I suggest you take them in the order listed for clarity.

That is the ideal price point to encourage more people to take up an EV for sure, trouble is however that small cars just do not suit everyone, certainly not for me. Nobody would be able to use the seat behind me as I'd need the drivers seat to be all the way back till it was touching the back seat, in order to drive it. And there is no way on earth I'd be able to get all weekly shopping for done for 4 people into that boot space, I'd have to make multiple trips, thus adding to the traffic congestion and also of course increased chances of be involved in an accident and of loosing my parking spot while out so much. And with such a small boot space, there is nowhere to put our steps when visiting military airfields etc.

This is still not concrete evidence by your own terms of reference, it needs to written by a couple a professors 😆😆 I'll wait for the official report to confirm the actual cause. Personally I hope no EVs were involved at all, it would improve confidence in them.

Well, I'm not going head-to-head with you on that one, let's just wait and see what happens, but my gut tells me, that software and electronics have minds of their own at times and thanks to Murphys footsoldiers, capacitors will wreak havoc in time, mark my words on that one.

Well both really.

Now this is the type of thing we need more of, up to now it has been one of the missing links in the whole EV loop, now we need to address the problem of preventing / or reducing the chances of thermal runaway, maybe design the sealed enclosure so that if it happens, they vent downwards rather than sideways to minimise the collateral damage (dragging other EVs into the meltdown and creating a massive chain event). While it is a pretty rare event now for EVs to catch fire, as they become more common, the events will increase naturally. The other elephant in the room that everyone needs to take on board before complacency sets in, is that it is also very rare for new cars to catch fire, it tends to be older cars, 10 plus years old with many miles under their belt and everything is getting worn and fuel drips onto hot exhausts etc, so we might well see increases in EV fires as they age. I think the reason why EV hire cars are so expensive to hire is a reflection of their higher purchase price, higher performance, and also their higher insurance costs, seems to be a perfectly logical conclusion.

More wind turbines?

I tried a Enyaq, still not as big as a Superb and a much smaller boot as well.

How many people have the ability to charge at home which the above figures are assuming, plus you need to factor in the £1,000 plus cost of the home charger and its installation, plus the extra up front costs of the EV against its ICE equivalent, also of course there aren't that many EVs that could accommodate 4 people that 6ft 4" tall and still have a boot space similar to that of a Superb. Most of the public chargers, which I would have to use, are in the realms of 50p per KWh and higher, which destroys your calculations, then if you don't do that many miles per year, any potential savings are not worth having as the upfront extra cost is never going to be repaid unless you keep the car for a long time. As I've always thought and said, EV's are currently not suitable for everyone and if the above figures are reflecting your scenario, then I'm pleased for you, but is not the case for a large part of the population.

Ideas like that may be the catalyst that is required to convince people to make the switch to EVs as well reducing the cost of ownership to make EVs comparable to that for ICEs. I know that @wyx087 goes on about overall costs, but that is of little comfort if the cost of entry is seen as being prohibitive for those on low incomes, it has to be affordable. Overall costs are such a subjective issue as they will vary greatly by the style of driving and of course the annual mileage, but ticket to the dance has to within grasp and not just to the better off sectors of the population.