Electric cars.

What? You? Never!!!

 

They now say they shall be 'recommended'! I'd have thought they would have been mandatory years ago.

I've never trusted airport car parks (not for car explosion reasons) and always get a lift or taxi to the airport.

Actually, I don't like multi storey car parks anywhere and can't remember the last time I used one.

 

They can only do it at ground level.

 

That will take some time to confirm. Whilst the early footage shows rear lights matching an Evoke, there are other JLR products (including hybrids) that share those same rear lights.
One thing is absolutely certain, out of 1500 vehicles in that car park, some will have been EV's and as soon as an EV is involved the dynamics of the fire changes entirely - once any battery device enters thermal runaway, they take a hell of a lot of persuading to stop. Even submerged, they can still burn.

 

Somewhat ironically, I was there a week past on Sunday for the first time and it looks as dodgy in reality as you see there. One can only presume that they were operating on the belief that no encasement would be needed as it wasn't for accommodation or habitation etc, merely a rack for cars. The lack of sprinklers or other fire suppression is a huge error, especially given it's proximity to airport buildings, planes and presumably aviation fuel.

You are correct that we drive around in potential bombs, but a diesel one is probably the least likely to spontaneously combust out of all of them. Diesel fuel almost refuses to ignite unless it has compression and/or is atomised. Notably on the footage of the car that is being blamed, the fire is on the nearside... so that tells me it is unlikely to even be the DPF that is the cause as it is mounted on the offside of the engine on that engine. I'm not even sure we will ever find out for sure, nor am I that anyone will recover any vehicles from that car park even if they appear undamaged, because it will be too dangerous to attempt recovery.... I suspect the car park will be demolished with everything in it being part of the salvage operation.

The airport's insurers backsides must be squeaking today.

 

The manufacturers will fight any fines - not least as the bulk of them are not UK based; they will simply threaten to close CarMaker.UK and carry on trading in the rest of the world. No government is stupid enough to follow through on that.

 

Not sure I have seen anyone hoping against hope that would be the case - do you have an example?

 

Personal feeling but I thoroughly dislike being forced into something that is many factors more expensive to purchase and insure when little thought has gone into the ability to provide an infrastructure to service the EV market.
That said I don't think anyone was hoping this was an EV that exploded

 

This whole thing is hugely complex - for a start, JLR should be worried... very worried. If it is proved that it was one of their products that caused this fire, they could find themselves on the receiving end of legal action. Their reputation in terms of reliability is pretty awful now sadly (one of the reasons I chose to avoid them when I had to change car), and for further related context, there is allegedly a current recall on the Discovery Hybrid for electrical issues - whether that relates to the HV or LV battery, I don't know.

Believe it or not, I am NOT anti-EV... I AM however very risk-averse and currently I am seeing things playing out in reality that seem to be being brushed under the carpet. It seems that there is almost a pressure not to even consider what might be underlying causes or to consider risk mitigation strategies, lest we scare people off with the truth.

Is every vehicle fire caused by an EV? NO. Is a fire involving an EV a completely different animal than we are used to with liquid fuels? Hell Yes.

My working life means that I am working alongside diesel, diesel hybrid and battery vehicles and seeing events such as those we have seen in recent days and weeks, it scares me witless. When these vehicles are parked up overnight, on charge, they are all parked in very close proximity to each other - - if one battery decides to take the huff for whatever reason and catch fire, then a considerable percentage of the fleet would be knocked out in one hit. This is a very real risk and has already seen damage within my industry (thankfully, not my company... yet)

If we want EV to succeed, then we need to understand more about the risks, understand what we can do to mitigate those risks and what we have to do on a personal level to protect our health. At the end of the day, a collection of vehicles and a building can burn to the ground completely and it matters not a jot as long as nobody is hurt.

The blunt truth here is that we now have (at least) a couple of car container ships that are toast and in the past week alone we have an EV and house destroyed, we have a hybrid bus that is cremated and we have a car park that has put out more emissions in one evening than most power stations would in a lifetime. EV's may or may not have been the cause, but they were certainly involved, and that involvement had an effect. Maybe it is time heads were extracted from rectums before someone gets killed?

 

Incidentally, I watched an interesting video that may explain why this is happening.

Tesla, quite rightly, have a policy to disable rapid charging on any vehicle that has been recorded on an insurance database as being involved in an accident that is beyond fairly light, cosmetic damage. Whilst a bodyshop can repair the vehicle body, it then has to go to a Tesla dealer and they drop the battery out from under the car to give it a safety inspection. It cannot be done in the car and is quite detailed. Once happy, they reassemble the car and certify it fit for rapid charging again - - the downside is that it costs into the thousands (circa £3K was quoted) and this is over and above the body repair. Bearing in mind that Tesla are opening up their charge network for other brand owners to use, I wouldn't be surprised if there was some sort of agreement where assurances were being sought for similar levels of stringency from other manufacturers and/or insurers.

Add on to that, the fact that to work on any EV (again, beyond cosmetics) an HV certified technician is needed, purely due to the voltages and stored energy involved - - again, this is a good thing, but how many bodyshops have an HV certified tech?

It would seem that the way out of this for insurers (and they are doing this to some degree with ICE cars too, by the way) is to declare the vehicle a total loss. They then put it through an auction house such as Co-Part where traders can buy them 'cheap' to repair and sell on again as a Cat-N/Cat-S car. That recovers some of the loss for the insurer and the balance between the recovery and pay out is their loss. I personally know of cases where they have written off ICE cars on the basis of a claim and some photos, and not physically seeing the car. Only two weeks ago, a friend had his Mercedes written off in this very way - it was parked, clumped from behind by a drunk driver, he sent photos of the damage and a week later they paid the money into his bank and collected his car.

 

UK could take a lesson from them - slash import duties and VAT on EV sales, that would bring the prices down and encourage uptake. We've lost the art of using the carrot and instead seem to think that beating with a stick will do better.