Graham Butcher

@Breezy_Pete Ouch, that is pretty nasty. Do you have access to a lathe at all?

@lol-lol I think you are right about it being a VW platform, just as the new Capri is as well.

What, £33,000 for a replacement battery?

I do as well, but before that can happen, they have still to find that mythical magic bullet. While LFP does help, they can and do burn but need a higher temp first. They do however emit more deadly gasses apparently.

Thanks, but I meant, what is the cell model number so that proper calculations can be made? So this is an old e-scooter which you have yourself modified, which, as it happens, also seems to worry the fire and emergency services the most because the scooter was not designed for the batteries that you have fitted and also few people actually have the required skill set to modify things correctly.

Let's be realistic here, shall we? Firstly, those fireman ports are only good if the fireman is actually standing there by the car when the battery enters thermal runaway. It also assumes that he has all the equipment ready, prepared to gain access to that port which is located directly on top of the battery pack, which presumably means it is located beneath the rear seat squab. It also assumes that the hose is already there and the pump is running. Meaning that he has to get into the car first and then remove the seat squab and puncture the sealed port. That is never going to happen anywhere other than in typical demonstrations of what could be done. The following is an extract from a Renault document. The "Fireman Access" port on a Renault Scenic is a specialized safety feature on the electric versions of the car (such as the E-Tech) designed to allow firefighters to flood the battery compartment and stop thermal runaway in minutes. It is typically integrated directly into the top of the high-voltage battery casing. Under normal circumstances, it is completely sealed and hidden. In the event of an emergency, firefighters use the pressure of a high-power water hose to rupture a specialized disc on the casing, which gives them direct access to spray water onto the battery cells. A video made by Renault follows lower down, which shows water and not foam. Water cools down the thermal runaway (assuming the points I raise above; in reality, it is going to take the firefighters, at best, many minutes to arrive at the scene of an EV in thermal runaway, at which point the entire car will be engulfed in flames, so there is no way they are going to be able to do what they show in the video. Fire blankets also do not put out the fire; they help prevent it spreading to surrounding cars, etc. That is all. And this again relies on the firefighters already being present at the moment the battery becomes a problem. Currently, at this moment in time, anything else is just not possible, and anyone believing anything else is burying their head in the sand and denying the truth.

Do you know what cells those batteries are using?

Correct, we do, but currently there is no effective way of dealing with a battery fire other than to let it burn out, and then, once the chemical reaction has ceased, it can be extinguished like any normal fire. By that time the damage has been done, and very little of the car or whatever remains is likely to be a total loss. There is never any sign of any problems with most batteries, EVs or e-scooters right up to the time that the problem makes itself evident by the off-gassing and jets of flames coming from them. Remember, they reside inside sealed chambers and are perfectly hidden out of sight. The jets of flames are the result of the build-up of gas within that sealed chamber, which then finds any weak spots in the chamber's construction and escapes, all of which add to the danger.

When you realise that an e-scooter battery actually has around 10 times the energy in it that a normal laptop battery does, you can understand the fire/emergency services being highly concerned about where these are being stored and charged.

@lol-lol The real issue with home storage batteries is the amount of energy they store is considerably higher per battery than all of your rechargeable torches, phones, laptops, tablets, etc. put together. This is why those with cars that are the subjects of safety recalls are often instructed to limit the amount of charge they hold and not to park or charge in a garage, underground car park or even near to other structures. The other devices you mention all store considerably less energy, and God forbid that they should catch fire; they will and do present a far lower threat level. Think of the stored energy as being tanks of petrol. Then think about a Zippo cigarette lighter, which typically holds around 8 ml of petrol/lighter fuel compared to a 1996 Renault 5 petrol car holding up to 43 litres of petrol; that is 5,375 times the amount of energy in a Zippo lighter, so which one would you think is going to be most dangerous in a fire? Would you store 43 litres of petrol inside your house? As to the balcony solar arrays you keep on about, forget what Milliband wants; they are highly likely to never be on sale here in the UK and hence would be illegal in the UK. The electrical industry is fighting them and citing them as being possibly dangerous and possibly deadly. They are not currently approved by the BSI, and in Milliband's desperation to make this happen, he has had a specification document written by the government, who are NOT qualified electrical experts. The insurance industry itself would more than likely also NOT honour any claim for any damage on property where these devices are installed / in use. So again, are you happy to shoulder the consequences? Should anything happen and your house be destroyed and maybe neighbours suffer as well if anything did happen and the insurance company dismissed any claim?

Germany is struggling to keep the car industry afloat.

Here the Skoda Epiq is constructed.

Tesla is having some delivery issues in the UK, as in this video. The sales centres are full of cars, but none are being delivered. I can't find anything from Tesla about this, but it is suggested by many that it is due to an issue with the DVLA not accepting the documentation. It is mentioned in this video about Blue Water shopping carpark being used a holding area for the cars that are not being delivered. The second video actually confirms this to be and the video was filmed at Blue Water.

I do that as well, how ever, the specs are often not correct and the reviews are very often for similar products, and you often see the product that is being reviewed is not the same as the product on offer. I have purchased items from the Amazon site and it arrives packed the same they do from Temu etc and the have been identical. Infact I have just cancelled 2 orders on Amazon that were ordered end of April, delivery put back to 16th June, now further pushed back to 2nd week July. Why, because Amazon only acted as the order point, delivery direct from China. Same item cheaper if buying direct from Temu.

If you think that Amazon only sell high quality items, no dodgy or fake stuff etc, then you would be wrong, they can be duped like anyone else. Not everything sold on Amazon is actually "sold" by them, they can and do operate like Aliexpress etc and be a shop window for either suppliers, they even ship from Amazon warehouses etc but you not buying from Amazon.

Because something carries the CE mark, it does not mean that it is either high quality or is actually really approved by the authorities in the country it's sold in. It is just a sign that the manufacturer has self assessed their own product.

Update time: I decided to plug in my scan tool and discovered that there were no fewer than 17 fault codes stored in the ECUs, and to be fair, I only did that because the car decided that it would not start because of a flat battery. I fitted a new battery last Sept, so I did not suspect that it could be duff. I cleared all but 2 codes which kept coming back: one was the digital aerial has a short to ground, and the other was a faulty air quality sensor on the AC. After clearing the other codes the seat has come back to life again, so the windscreen fitter must have disconnected the battery but never cleared any errors after reconnecting again. Anyway, the battery, it seems was faulty and a new replacement one fitted today

Again, not everyone has the necessary cash to finance these things; also, they should be installed in a safe and regulation-compliant manner, which means installed professionally, and that further increases their expenditure of money that they never had in the first place. Let me tell you that much of this Chinese-made equipment is not made to standards that are approved by the electrical industry, even those that claim to be compliant with this or that standard, and some even produce test certificates claiming full compliance, but they are fakes. I have been involved in operations to seize huge consignments at the docks and indeed even tracking down shipments of goods that had slipped through the nets and ended up on certain electrical wholesalers' shelves on sale to both the electrical trade and the public.

It seems (like I thought they would) that the electrical industry and also the regulators of the wiring regs etc, are fighting Ed Miliband over the introduction of the plug-in solar panels for domestic use. The reason you cannot plug in a power source into a socket is quite logical, really; it breaks every safety rule, and that system (as used in Europe) has already been the source of many accidents and, I think, a fatality.

Here is the online details of my fuseboxes, which is exactly the same as the ones in the printed manual, except the the printed version, these are pages 242 - 245 and the manual has 275 pages, but the online one the manual has 336 pages and the fuse details are on pages 302 - 305, but the pages themselves are identical? FUSES.pdf

I don't have a fuse with that designation, Fuse1 in the internal fuse box is for Adblue system and fuse 1 in the engine compartment is for the parking brake.

This might be just a coincidence. But I have just had a new windscreen fitted following a rock being thrown up by a lorry's wheels hitting it, which left a small chip, which after a few days became a long crack and was growing. The screen was replaced last week, and yesterday I discovered the seat was not responding to the controls. I cannot see any fuse listed in the owner's manual which states it supplies power to the seats. The driver's seat is working as usual, which made me think it must be fuse-related, but the fuse chart makes zero reference to any fuses. Any ideas? Edit. Update I think that they must have done something when they fitted the windscreen, just went to go out in the car and the battery is dead flat, highly unlikely to the battery as it was a brand new fitted 16th Sept 2025. Since it was fitted last Wednesday it has been out on a some decent runs, 2 were 30 mile nonstop round trips, and another was a trip of 160 miles on Friday, no warning lights on or any issues other than the passenger seat inoperable. Now charging the battery, this is not good news. I'm supposed to be taking my wife and sister-in-law to Stansted airport tomorrow to their flight.

I'm not convinced that these alleged facts are the truth; like I say, all will come out in the future, just like diesel facts did. The part I was referring to was not the entire lifespan, but just the part for the fuel to power them, that part in isolation

Just wait until the real truth about how much pollution is generated by EVs and I suspect that the two will be pretty close. Because at the present moment, the EV pollution is just removed from the point of use, whereas ICE it is at the point of use. I fully expect that we are currently not being told the real truth for obvious reasons, but one day the actual figures will come out. What cannot be denied, however, is the running cost for fuel, unless there is going to be a massive jump in the price of electricity overnight when EVs are generally charged at home, and if you can and it suits your driving requirements, then on pure fuel costs alone, it is a no-brainer. However, that is not the only factor that people will judge their requirements on.

If this is factual, then this will be a complete game changer, leaving only the charging conundrum that could be the roadblock to many more people adopting electric cars.