When you nick a car, maybe clone it you might well get away past ANPR, stay off the radar a while, fill up at filling station or anyplace.

Break it and sell the parts, do whatever.

 

You can do the same with a Stolen EV, hide it,s location, charge in public or private and get away with it.

I have a friend who's career has been clocking cars, taxis, hire and sales cars and now EV,s.

He takes off limiters, makes sure there is no OTA upgrades etc.

 

He is helping criminals, drug dealers etc that do not want traced, do not want HMRC knowing what they do.

He started skipping school, became a computer hacker, worked in the computer games industry and he knows it all.

Now there are kids that can do what he does, but he travels all over the world and does it, they do it local.

 

?

What did you mean by this? 

Long Term Parking? 

Edited 10 September, 20232 yr by toot

On 09/09/2023 at 10:43, Graham Butcher said:

normally have mine set at 21 or 22C to use it as little as possible. But as these mk3s are not built to the same standard as the mk2s, I find that when I get in the car is like a bloody sauna, so turn the AC down 16 or 17C to rapidly take the temperature down

 

If you can select the temperature then you have the Climatronic system (lucky you! I miss it now I no longer have it) so you are kidding yourself if you think the temperature will fall any quicker, the Climatronic takes care of that and does a better job because it will adjust the flaps to keep the airflow concentrated on the driver/passenger making the temperature of their part of the environment fall quicker. Yes it will slow down the Delta rate a bit when it approaches the set point like my new kettle to avoid overshoot.

 

Selecting "LO" will cool the cabin slightly quicker than the Climatronic but that means the whole cabin.

 

What you are doing is akin to turning up a heating thermostat or thermostatic valve to a higher temperature than you desire because the system is not reacting as fast as you would like, it will achieve nothing, you need a larger boiler.

10 minutes ago, toot said:

When you nick a car, maybe clone it you might well get away past ANPR, stay off the radar a while, fill up at filling station or anyplace.

Break it and sell the parts, do whatever.

 

You can do the same with a Stolen EV, hide it,s location, charge in public or private and get away with it.

I have a friend who's career has been clocking cars, taxis, hire and sales cars and now EV,s.

He takes off limiters, makes sure there is no OTA upgrades etc.

 

He is helping criminals, drug dealers etc that do not want traced, do not want HMRC knowing what they do.

He started skipping school, became a computer hacker, worked in the computer games industry and he knows it all.

Now there are kids that can do what he does, but he travels all over the world and does it, they do it local.

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.

 

 

Edited 10 September, 20232 yr by Graham Butcher

@Graham Butcher

I know there are lots of posts.  I know this stuff, i think we all do here. 

For years they left Scotland into NI and across the border and then away by sea.

 

Huge businesses built on criminality of stolen / cloned vehicles.

Transported on legitimate transporters. 

Do you think the parts that vehicles required came out of thin air in the days before the internet and mail order parts. 

 

Scotland Drug Death Capital of the world, where was the money laundered other than in the Scottish Motor Trade.

Stuff even travelled in scrap. inside crushed cars.

 

There is a reason there is so much drugs and crime in Scotland and that is the selective deaf, dumb and blind.

That would be local councillors and politicians and police officers.

 

 

Edited 10 September, 20232 yr by toot

I was just looking at Chelmsford on ZAP map as I found it rather odd when you were saying there was not a decent choice of cheap public charging that you are aware of and Chelmsfor does seem to be rather poorly served by cheap and available public EV charging.

 

Which is not the case for much of Essex.  Chelmsford is less than ten miles for the the Braintree Gridserve super EV station which has 32 public chargers of various output including AC ones of up to 22 kW at the fairly reasonable 49p per kWh, use the right credit card and get some kick back too.

 

Or pop in to Chelmsford at park at Q park in town the charge rate is 24p per kWh for, might be 25p or so for non Octopus Electroverse customers, that cheap than most people pay at home and could offset the parking charge and its Sunday rate is pretty cheap and 4 hour rate not too bad either at 115p per hours.

 

Chelmsford might well get the proper EV charging at its Morrisons like Clackton got with its 20 chargers of various sizes.  Its all going, one either sees the work going on at the site or if plugged in to the EV info channels like ZAP map one may well get a notification of a bunch of EV charge points getting switched on as part of the 2500 to 3000 points commissioned each month.

 

I do not pay much for my EV PCP, well less than £300 a month and negligible fuel running costs and low servicing costs plus a very serene driving experience.  Perhap lucky in Worcester with its location but there are not many places in England at least where running an EV is much of a trail, drive or no drive.  

 

@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?

Edited 10 September, 20232 yr by Graham Butcher

37 minutes ago, lol-lol said:

I was just looking at Chelmsford on ZAP map as I found it rather odd when you were saying there was not a decent choice of cheap public charging that you are aware of and Chelmsfor does seem to be rather poorly served by cheap and available public EV charging.

 

Which is not the case for much of Essex.  Chelmsford is less than ten miles for the the Braintree Gridserve super EV station which has 32 public chargers of various output including AC ones of up to 22 kW at the fairly reasonable 49p per kWh, use the right credit card and get some kick back too.

 

Or pop in to Chelmsford at park at Q park in town the charge rate is 24p per kWh for, might be 25p or so for non Octopus Electroverse customers, that cheap than most people pay at home and could offset the parking charge and its Sunday rate is pretty cheap and 4 hour rate not too bad either at 115p per hours.

 

Chelmsford might well get the proper EV charging at its Morrisons like Clackton got with its 20 chargers of various sizes.  Its all going, one either sees the work going on at the site or if plugged in to the EV info channels like ZAP map one may well get a notification of a bunch of EV charge points getting switched on as part of the 2500 to 3000 points commissioned each month.

 

I do not pay much for my EV PCP, well less than £300 a month and negligible fuel running costs and low servicing costs plus a very serene driving experience.  Perhap lucky in Worcester with its location but there are not many places in England at least where running an EV is much of a trail, drive or no drive.  

 

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. 

Edited 10 September, 20232 yr by Graham Butcher

Morrisons.  1 available @ 79 pence a kWh.  

Raw Greene Kings Gardeners 2.  75 pence.  22 kW.

 

Then the others, just ridiculous pricing.  IMO.

 

Edited 10 September, 20232 yr by toot

6 minutes ago, toot said:

Morrisons.  1 available @ 79 pence a kWh.  

Raw Greene Kings Gardeners 2.  75 pence.  22 kW.

 

Then the others, just ridiculous pricing.  IMO.

 

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

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.

 

 

 

@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.

 

 

Edited 10 September, 20232 yr by Graham Butcher

What is the 'even' about targeting Fiestas?

There has always been the theft of Fords and other common or garden cars.    Mk1  Fabia are taken as well

 

4 hours and lots of water on the Merc van.

   Then what, was it in a skip of water or in a storage facility 150 feet from everything else? 

 

..........................

Bails of straw combust at this time of year, they can burn down building, the Emergency rescue / Fire Services can be there for hours.

 

****ing down now, that has possibly put an end to that risk.  What a shame for any farmer with the bails still out.

Edited 10 September, 20232 yr by toot

3 hours ago, wyx087 said:

Yes, hydrogen still has its place as a niche product that caters to those that just cannot make EV work, mainly to minimise downtime.

A lot of people won’t go EV due to downtime. I couldn’t make it work with a 400v car due to my business travel, so I am limited to the highest speed chargers and some hope when working. 
Getting people out of ice is the goal here, hence when I said hybrid I kept it range extender electric drive only.

 

BEV vs FCEV is the secondary debate of what is best vs good and the answer won’t be the same for everyone. Time does matter.

 

 

3 hours ago, wyx087 said:

 

The problem is all those storage methods (home battery, pumped hydro, storage at generation sites) require additional cap-ex and thus makes renewable more expensive than necessary. Batteries for all applications are not nice to make, it is bonkers the battery in EV are not being utilised when the car is parked. Smart cloud based system have the capability to create virtual power plants or power sink with much less front cost.

But once a pumped hydro or h2 production facility is built it can generate. Sure use v2g, but if I was buying a car outright with lithium batteries I wouldn’t allow it myself due to increased battery degradation. Small maybe, but I want to keep the v. Expensive car going as long as possible.

 

3 hours ago, wyx087 said:

FCEV is only slightly better than ICE when using green hydrogen.

The typical diagram as to why:

 

As long as this inefficiency is captured in the running cost, I have no problem with hydrogen FC cars.

 

Blue is well understood to be worse than Green in terms of environmental impact. Using blue hydrogen at cheaper cost than green would be functionally the same as running petrol/diesel and not paying attention to their pollution.

 

Thing is though, it’s almost not at all about efficiency and hugely about localised air pollution.

 

As I said elsewhere I’d use excess wind to make green hydrogen, store and sell for transport and keep some to make electricity for the grid in low generation days. Even with blue (and a few years notice plan for a suitable tax on blue for price parity plus a bit with green) the CO2 being captured is better than it going in the atmosphere along with NOx and PM from petrol and diesel.

Local air pollution is a very immediate problem along with CO2 and if people don’t want a car with a plug, I’d rather get them a step closer until battery/technology improves generally.

 

3 hours ago, wyx087 said:

 

Hum.... sorry, I have forgot about the isolator switch. The EV charger and electrician used the isolation switch, not the fuse, I remember. I can't recall if solar company pulled my main fuse. I can recall the main fuse seal was broken after solar install. Meter inspector and smart meter installer didn't bat an eye lid.

 

Smart meter installer told me they’re been tasked with looking more carefully at the seals now prices are much higher.

 

To be honest, I think the DNO should be required to provide a fuse, meter and an isolator,  but that’s just my view.

4 minutes ago, toot said:

What is the 'even' about targeting Fiestas?

There has always been the theft of Fords and other common or garden cars.    Mk1  Fabia are taken as well

 

4 hours and lots of water on the Merc van.   Then what, was it in a skip of water or in a storage facility 150 feet from everything else? 

The fiesta isn’t electric, what did I miss?

Thieves steal stuff… in other news the world is round, the pope is catholic and bears xxxx in the woods.

^^^ Nail on head,

 

Seemingly EV,s catch fire and are hard or impossible to put out and people steal high and low value cars. 

 

Never heard of any of that in the recent past, went right on by.

11 minutes ago, toot said:

What is the 'even' about targeting Fiestas?

There has always been the theft of Fords and other common or garden cars.    Mk1  Fabia are taken as well

 

4 hours and lots of water on the Merc van.   Then what, was it in a skip of water or in a storage facility 150 feet from everything else? 

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?

Edited 10 September, 20232 yr by Graham Butcher

5 minutes ago, toot said:

^^^ Nail on head,

 

Seemingly EV,s catch fire and are hard or impossible to put out and people steal high and low value cars. 

 

Never heard of any of that in the recent past, went right on by.

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.

Are there EV,s parked in remote charging spots and no ICE vehicles there also?

 

No idea what the point is of any of it really.    I see cars on Long Term Parking / Storage areas for weeks and months.

In supposedly secure sites with warning signs of companies owned by convicted drug dealers, protection racket crime families.

 

You dare touch them.    There is no security just signs.  Sometimes Cameras on Tri=pods in hi-viz.  

Edited 10 September, 20232 yr by toot

@Graham Butcher

 

i think you’ll find we all got confused by the fiesta comment.

 

If you’d just said something like wouldn’t thieves target large numbers of parked up EV regularly left overnight we might have got your point.

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.

55 minutes ago, Graham Butcher said:

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 

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 blue buses that circulate on its network.

 

The Mercedes van is conventional Lithium battery I would have thought and I have not heard anything about the even though I am based at Heathrow.  Issues with vehicles of all sorts are not unusual.

 The Bollore bus fires, these buses use solid state Lithium Metal polyimide.  Cyril Bollore, the owner of Bollore stated that the fire appear to have started in an electrical component which eventually seem to spread to the battery, I expect there will be a long court and technical battle over this.  Questions might be if the electrics had been modified or non approved component replacement as oft is looked at.  There are many of these buses in Singapore in an environment which is much hotter and humid than Paris.  WiIl be interesting to see how this one ends.  

 

Just to remind all of the stats ......

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2022/12/gas-vs-electric-accident-and-fire-safety.html

the Bureau of Transportation Statistics and the National Transportation Safety Board. The site found that hybrid vehicles had the most fires per 100,000 sales at 3474.5. There were 1529.9 fires per 100k for gas vehicles and just 25.1 fires per 100k sales for electric vehicles. 

 

 

4 minutes ago, cheezemonkhai said:

@Graham Butcher

 

i think you’ll find we all got confused by the fiesta comment.

 

If you’d just said something like wouldn’t thieves target large numbers of parked up EV regularly left overnight we might have got your point.

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. 

You are a haver.  You seem to know so little about crime it is unreal. 

Just see what vehicles are being searched for for those that shot or attacked someone, fire bombed or what ever.

More often than not for Glasgow it is a Skoda. 

 

As to high value cars,

Many of these vehicles are owned by financial institutions.    They are lased cars, offshore workers cars, all sorts of people.

 

How long are people parking there expensive or inexpensive EV,s rapid charging, or are they fast charging at Park & Rides etc

 

All very very strange, where there is EV charging there is electricity, storage batteries and controllers, odd to have no security cameras. 

Edited 10 September, 20232 yr by toot

Older cars are targeted by organised criminals to sell for spare parts. There’s huge demand for used parts for less than new, so they Nick the popular older cars and flog them as parts. Cleaned money.

 

In Birmingham they’re even taking parts off cars whilst parked up for a few hours to sell.

10 minutes ago, lol-lol said:

 

The Mercedes van is conventional Lithium battery I would have thought and I have not heard anything about the even though I am based at Heathrow.  Issues with vehicles of all sorts are not unusual.

 The Bollore bus fires, these buses use solid state Lithium Metal polyimide.  Cyril Bollore, the owner of Bollore stated that the fire appear to have started in an electrical component which eventually seem to spread to the battery, I expect there will be a long court and technical battle over this.  Questions might be if the electrics had been modified or non approved component replacement as oft is looked at.  There are many of these buses in Singapore in an environment which is much hotter and humid than Paris.  WiIl be interesting to see how this one ends.  

 

Just to remind all of the stats ......

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2022/12/gas-vs-electric-accident-and-fire-safety.html

the Bureau of Transportation Statistics and the National Transportation Safety Board. The site found that hybrid vehicles had the most fires per 100,000 sales at 3474.5. There were 1529.9 fires per 100k for gas vehicles and just 25.1 fires per 100k sales for electric vehicles. 

 

 

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.