Graham Butcher

I'm not an expert on that particular subject, but I suspect that it is related to how long any fire with a almost flat battery could burn for in a similar vein to a fuel tank that was almost empty compared to a full tank. Perhaps a simple way to think of it is like your lead acid 12v battery in your ICE car, a fully charged battery would be capable of turning the engine over many times before it ran out of power, whereas a duff or a battery in a low state of charge may turn the engine once or twice and stop doing it. So I guess the thinking is that if a faulty cell or cells in a EV battery developed a internal fault and allowed excess current to flow, thus causing heat and lots of it, because of the batteries low state of charge, it would not be able to sustain that fault current and thus, the current drops and the heat drops as well.

It is looking very much like the fire and subsequent sinking of the Felicity Ace in 2022 and the devastating fire on board the Frementle Highway in 2023 was indeed as I suspected at the time, caused by electric cars going into thermal runaway a report by the European 'Maritime Safety Agency' is likely to be claiming as it has just issued new guidance and already the Greek Ministry of Merchant Shipping has placed a ban electric cars with batteries charged in excess of 40%, following the investigation into the fires on both the ships. Other shipping companies it seems are already implementing bans on electric cars. The following link provides evidence in support and may need to be run through Google Translator. Griekse veerboten weigeren elektrische auto’s na nieuwe veiligheidsrichtlijn | Auto55.be | Nieuws

My car is fully compliant with all LEZ including those up your way with one exception, Oxford which has a zero emissions zone, but I can still drive in it if I pay £4 a day so looks more like a revenue raiser then an attempt to improve air quality, like the ULEZ as there are still many official vehicles, police, ambulance, fire, military, councils etc that are not compliant.

Much the same as here with regard to walking tours of Chelmsford, the main shopping areas are pedestrian only including the market. We have one street the that has shops both sides and cars still drive down it, one way though. Our buses are not going electric anytime soon though. I expect that those you have which are, belong to the city council who would have to change on order to offer a service? Our buses are privately owned and ran by firstbus.

@CrasherIt won't be the first time that world leaders have got things so wrong, not that I have belief either way. I just like to look before I leap. Also the world has over its lifetime seen All kinds of weather events such as an ice age, this we know from history, we have also seen extreme flooding, droughts etc, and all before internal combustion was ever invented so what caused that hot spell? Time will be the exposer of the truth, the thing is will any of us be around or our children and or their children be here to see what the truth is?

Yes, that was all made clear in the article. I'm only too well aware of the geography of Scotland being that I used to be a regular visitor up there for work.

Plus when you consider that some of the fines at Dundee and the others in Scotland for repeat offenders are just under £1000 and how windy it is there, and the cities are not as big as London etc, makes you wonder if the real agenda is to take all ICE cars off the roads completely. The true pollution can't be that bad with the wind coming off the sea blowing it away.

Not enough time in my life to read a thread from the start and wade through all the bickering, and BS. 😆

Oh, so it had been posted before, sorry about that, but better to have it twice than not at all.

Just found this channel 4 documentary, which I think was filmed a while ago, even though, it does seem to raise some issues even though some have said that these are not real issues, but I can't help but wonder if they are real and some might be in denial. Not having an electric car myself, I can only go by the information that I'm given and thereby lies the hub of the problem. There is conflicting information out there in the public domain, some of it comes from YouTubers who may or may not have a particular stance on this, some on one side of the fence and others on the other side. I would expect that a main stream TV channel, respected for their normal high quality documentaries, to be 100% honest with their videos and information that they present to the viewer, but is it?? https://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-truth-about-electric-cars-dispatches/on-demand/73312-001

In the news today is that as of April 2025 all electric cars are going to have start paying VED at a flat rate of £190 a year and here is the real kicker if your electric car is what the government feel is an "expensive" car that there will be an additional tax on top of the £190. They have deemed it that if your car had or has a RRP published price in excess of £40,000 then it is an expensive car (so plenty will get a nasty shock when they learn that what they thought was not expensive is classed as being expensive by law), so any car in that category will also have an extra £410, making their annual VED bill go from £0 to £600 overnight.

OK, I might give it another application of the silicon spray down the windscreen vents, when the car comes back again tomorrow from the service dept.

Which flap was it that you had problems with? Mine is the demister flap/actuator that groans and creaks and sprayed into all the vents 2 or 3 times and that demister flap is still noisy.

Yes, correct, but my point was not that all electric cars are expensive, but the ones that can normally be seen around my area tend to be the expensive versions. There are base models in all ranges of cars and even those Tesla are way more expensive than many others. The iX are £71k for the base model, i7 = £102k for the base model, EQS = £117k base model, i-Pace = £70k base model, Taycan = £86k base model.

Lots of them are model Y and X as well as S models.

Be that as it may, the point I was making is that the instruments used to take the measurements are all supposed to be calibrated to the same standard, so the UK shows green while parts of Europe showing various shades of yellow through to orange and red, then we must be doing better than other places.

I don't think so, the same yardstick is used for every country.

Eh, I think you might be saying that the data is UK specific which is lower than the WHO standards, correct? If so then the data is not UK specific but is actual worldwide data in real time.

You're lucky, we have had a 4 month wet spell.

Very interesting to see that the EU aim to be first to achieve Carbon neutral status by 2050, considering when you drill down into the actual live data of the pollution levels of the air we breathe, the UK is already safely into the green safe zone without all the low emission zones and electric vehicles while many parts of the EU are in the moderate to high pollution levels, so its not saying very much for the rest of world is it.

I don't know if Tesla here is open to non Tesla or not, all I've ever seen on them are Tesla's. Those 6-year loans etc, again are not creating a level playing field, diesels cost more than their petrol counterparts, but they did not attract special rates / extended loans etc.

Equally, while Scotland maybe as you say, I don't know because I don't live there, and while you do and know the area, just as I do down here in my neck of the woods and so in reality all we can actually talk about really is what the situation is like in our own areas. You get/had free charging in some areas, whereas that does not appear to be the case down here, not in Chelmsford at least as there are as yet no council chargers. The chargers we do have, apart from Tesla, are Podcharge. Geniepoint or BPPulse, and are nearly always empty most of the time when I see them. Always see some Tesla's on charge at the Tesla centre. Regards to free charging, its not really free as all the other ICE drivers are also contributing to the cost of that, regardless wherever that might be in the UK, never come across EV drivers subsidising fossil fuel for us ICE drivers so that is not a level playing field, neither is it when governments create business concessions or indeed BIK reductions for those company EV drivers. The EV market is, like it or not, a false one, there was never any such deals around for diesel when that was the favoured fuel of the future back in the day. Diesel became popular because of the extra mpg figures, made it more attractive to companies and private buyers alike

England also had loads of EU money thrown its way as well, but it would seem as if we, the public were not openly told where the funding for certain projects came from, leading the vast majority of the public believing that it came from Westminster, such was the high degree of smoke and mirrors being deployed with the ultimate aim of ensuring that the events of 2016 actually happened as planned. It was never in the public interest, but they employed clever tricks and subterfuge to convince us that it was. We also had more companies growing through the Covid period, and of course many got taxpayer funded incentives while they were loads of money, in fact there were mpre billionaires created in that period then ever before I think you'll find.

I seriously doubt that things have changed much in respect of rep mobiles etc in the short time I have been retired, and before that I have been a company car keeper/driver over 40 years. When it comes to company cars that are not regarded as pool cars, i.e., a car that the employee takes home and uses it personal social and domestic use, then the employee also gets a choice in the car stakes as they pay BIK tax on it. The only time when that does take place is if an employee leaves and the new recruit gets to take over an existing car. I don't know of any company that gives their employees a top rung car from a premium company, most companies that I know, and friends who are driving company cars tell me that they are given a budget of upto £x for their new cars and that is how I came to get a flagship model from Skoda whereas the same budget would only get me from their sister company Audi, a A4 Tech with limited spec, whereas I had the lot including a DVD player with surround sound, TV, and cooled seats etc as standard, and it also benefited the company as well, despite the list price being almost equal, the lease deal was much less as the residual value after 3 years was considerably higher than the Audi. So I had more space, more luxury, more tech and toys than many colleagues who were badge snobs, and yet both cars shared the same engines and running gear. If I was working and had to charge an EV at a public charger during the working day, then I would not be chatting to other EV drivers or taking much notice of what was or was not there, I'd be busy on the phone and catching up with some admin. What happens up north has little to with what happens down south, so I could be saying to you;- Basically, Go south young man, and you might see the difference from the north and indeed Scotland.😊 We have already said that Scotland does appear to be way ahead of England in terms of both the abundance of energy and its charging infrastructure. Also Scotland has its own government and can and does things differently to England.

Around here, we have many ex council estates, which are HA owned and some of the newer ones do have driveways, but they are few and far between. WE do also have loads of older style larger houses with huge gardens and drives, all are private houses and simply loads of new private estates being built all around the outskirts of the city which either integral garages and or drives and it is these areas that has the most of the higher end electric cars, and a few have 2 electric cars, of which Tesla's seem to be the popular choice (white ones of course).