20 Car Innovations That DID NOT Stand the Test of Time

[portland_bill]

I’d maybe agree with this except that massive fire at Luton airport, that wiped out 1500 cars was started by a diesel landrover.

Earlir this year, I met a guy who works in accident investigation. He was giving a presentation to Driver Trainers. He was one of the team that were called in to investigate the Luton fire, and was able to give some vital information.
The picture on most of the news, is from another fire elsewhere, as the pic was of a newer hybrid vehicle.
The vehicle that caused the fire, was an older vehicle, that had been converted to run on gas. The conversion was poorly done, and leaked, which started the fire. The fire started some distance away form the airport, but not wishing to miss his plane, the driver drove into the car park, with his car on fire, which came to a halt, near some EVs.
Had he stopped outside, it would just have been a simple car fire, easily extinguished by one fire crew, and a mess for passers by to look at. If he'd stopped away from any EV, collateral damage would have been much less, and again, fairly easily dealt with. He chose to take a fire into the building.
Whilst EVs did not start the fire, their presence escalated the issue, from a major cleanup, to a complete building destroyed.
I'm guessing the guy's insurance may abandon him, as any insured person is supposed to minimise risk, not create it. The cause lies with the gas fitter, whose liability can be argued to be the cost of a replacement vehicle. The consequential damage was caused by poor decisions. I think Land Rover owner may never finish paying for this.

 

[StevenRB45]

Any unreported fire in a structure with no fire control measures filled with hundreds of tonnes of flammable material has the potential to do this.

It would spread for as long as no one reported it once its at a critical mass it's bloody hard to put out.

From the sounds of it the bloke walked into the explosives store smoking and then put his cigarette on the top of a box marked explosive and went on holiday.

 

[PuntoHowTo]

Earlir this year, I met a guy who works in accident investigation. He was giving a presentation to Driver Trainers. He was one of the team that were called in to investigate the Luton fire, and was able to give some vital information.
The picture on most of the news, is from another fire elsewhere, as the pic was of a newer hybrid vehicle.
The vehicle that caused the fire, was an older vehicle, that had been converted to run on gas. The conversion was poorly done, and leaked, which started the fire.

Sorry but I have to call BS on this, mainly because the official report has already been issued which not only includes CCTV of the car entering the carpark but also shows the car to have been a diesel non hybrid vehicle and the cause of the initial fire to have been an electrical fault or component failure that spread the fire to other under bonnet plastics.

Yes the fire did start away from the car park and the owner drove up to level 3 before stopping but it was only showing light smoke as it entered the carpark so there is no reason to suspect the owner deliberately drove a burning car into the building. There is nothing in the report about the “diesel” non hybrid vehicle having any sort of gas conversion, you don’t tend to convert diesel cars to run on gas, so I think this person it making things up probably from third hand information

Full report here ->https://www.bedsfire.gov.uk/sites/d...icant Incident Report LLA Car Park 2 fire.pdf

 

[portland_bill]

Sorry but I have to call BS on this, mainly because the official report has already been issued which not only includes CCTV of the car entering the carpark but also shows the car to have been a diesel non hybrid vehicle and the cause of the initial fire to have been an electrical fault or component failure that spread the fire to other under bonnet plastics.

Yes the fire did start away from the car park and the owner drove up to level 3 before stopping but it was only showing light smoke as it entered the carpark so there is no reason to suspect the owner deliberately drove a burning car into the building. There is nothing in the report about the “diesel” non hybrid vehicle having any sort of gas conversion, you don’t tend to convert diesel cars to run on gas, so I think this person it making things up probably from third hand information

Full report here ->https://www.bedsfire.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2024-10/Significant Incident Report LLA Car Park 2 fire.pdf

That 'official report' is the fire service report, which is about how they dealt with the fire. The only reference to the vehicle is from the driver, when calling the fire service. The person I spoke with is not involved with the fire service, but is a major incident investigator, working mostly with the police and insurance companies, and was investigating causes and consequences, rather than how the fire is dealt with. I would not be surprised if other reports also exist, or are being prepared, from other parties' viewpoints. The person I spoke with was invited to the meeting to talk about his work in incident investigation, and the Luton incident was not part of his presentation, merely an aside.

 

[PuntoHowTo]

That 'official report' is the fire service report, which is about how they dealt with the fire. The only reference to the vehicle is from the driver, when calling the fire service. The person I spoke with is not involved with the fire service, but is a major incident investigator, working mostly with the police and insurance companies, and was investigating causes and consequences, rather than how the fire is dealt with. I would not be surprised if other reports also exist, or are being prepared, from other parties' viewpoints. The person I spoke with was invited to the meeting to talk about his work in incident investigation, and the Luton incident was not part of his presentation, merely an aside.

Actually it does mention the vehicle and does state it was a diesel non hybrid 2014 Range Rover Sport with a 3 litre engine, there is no mention of “conversion to gas” and as I previously stated you don’t convert diesel cars to gas, and so this supposed experts comments don’t match with reality.

Page 87 of the report goes into some detail about the impact of electric vehicles on the fire, basically showing that there is no evidence to show that EVS had any real impact on the fire, and there where the battery did not cause the initial fire there is no difference in terms of the impact of the fire if compared to a petrol or diesel vehicle.

One thing stated in the report is that chemical analysis of the run off water did not show any trace of chemicals that would be found if electric car batteries had been involved.
It also states there was no ev charging points in the building.

This all goes back to my initial comment a few lines up now that there is considerable prejudice against electric cars which the petrochemical companies are happy to allow to continue because EVs consistently get painted in a poor light despite all evidence to the contrary.

 

[portland_bill]

Actually it does mention the vehicle and does state it was a diesel non hybrid 2014 Range Rover Sport with a 3 litre engine, there is no mention of “conversion to gas” and as I previously stated you don’t convert diesel cars to gas, and so this supposed experts comments don’t match with reality.

Many Waitrose trucks, delivering to their supermarkets declare on the cab that they run on gas. I've stood near to quite a few when working at their branches.

Dual Fuel Vehicles | Diesel With LPG Or BioLPG | Calor

Reduce the fuel costs and carbon emissions for your fleet, by combining LPG or BioLPG with diesel.

www.calor.co.uk

Whilst unusual, and certainly recent, it can be done. A Google search found several companies offering connversion kits.

 

[bugsymike]

Many Waitrose trucks, delivering to their supermarkets declare on the cab that they run on gas. I've stood near to quite a few when working at their branches.

Dual Fuel Vehicles | Diesel With LPG Or BioLPG | Calor

Reduce the fuel costs and carbon emissions for your fleet, by combining LPG or BioLPG with diesel.

www.calor.co.uk

Whilst unusual, and certainly recent, it can be done. A Google search found several companies offering connversion kits.

Wow! I learnt something new yet again.
Although looking at the conversion costs, they are more than most of my vehicles cost to buy.

 

[PuntoHowTo]

Many Waitrose trucks, delivering to their supermarkets declare on the cab that they run on gas. I've stood near to quite a few when working at their branches.

These are Lorrys built from new to run on CNG and are considerably more expensive than a normal lorry, it only makes sense for big companies and corporations to do this to reduce some of their CO2 emissions.

I remember looking at gas injection systems on landrover about 15 - 20 years ago when I had my Range Rover for the average Joe doing normal milage they do not offer any cost savings and the installation charges are massive. It is only for people wanting to reduce CO2 and the average diesel car already has low co2 compared to petrol versions

again I’ll refer you to the 100plus page document which does not just discuss how the fire was dealt with, but does cover the investigations into the initial cause and the impact of EVs on the fire, it mentions nothing about any gas conversion system, which I think would be quite an important detail. It does however, discuss the cause of the original fire in the Range Rover, which is that a component or electrical fault developed which then spread to plastics and other flammable objects under the bonnet. 1500 cars with tanks of fuel and no sprinkler system combined with 10mph winds in an open structure… all more of an issue than EVs

I tend to believe the actual official report from the fire service and is easily available to the public, over hearsay from someone who claims to have been involved, with no actual proof.


Petrol and diesel cars still catch fire considerably more often than electric cars, hybrids are even worse. And no matter how long one electric car fire takes to deal with there are around 60 more ICE car fires to deal with per 1 electric car fire. (Per 100,000 cars sold) and there are only 4% EVs on uk roads so 96% are ev or hybrid and are considerably more likely to catch fire….

Basically fires are not that big a deal in EVs but are disproportionately reported when they do occur and the impact exaggerated to create resistance to EVs

As a consumer it doesn’t matter how long it takes to deal with a car fire, it’s still your car on fire and given the actual evidence if this is a significant concern when making buying choices between electric or ICE the electric car makes much more sense.

 

[portland_bill]

 

[PuntoHowTo]

To be honest he’s pandering to his audience, people watch his channel because he posts about EVs catching fire and he keeps providing videos of EVs catching fire.

Here one observation I had about his two example cars, the ford truck had a fairly straightforward cabin fire. They called the fire service while it was still smouldering and it took very little to put the fire out. There was no spread of the fire to the fuel source, no spread of fire under the bonnet to where there is plenty of chemicals and liquids to burn.

The ev He used in the parking garage, he posed that we observe just how quickly the fire took hold In the ev, yet the video only shows a large amount of smoke around the vehicle before it catches fire. We actually don’t know how long that car has sat smouldering and smoking before it finally burst into flame, I have tried to look and find the original video but it seems to have come from a news report that showed only that short clip of the fire being already well established, he claims it only too 6 seconds from smoking to visible fire, but he doesn’t know that and has not shown that.

The next thing is this is a battery fire, it’s not a cabin fire, we are not talking like for like and evs are capable of having the same issues that lead to cabin fires, it is commented by the report I posted above that a cabin fire in an ev is no more complicated to deal with than a fire in a non ev.
How long would that truck fire take to deal with if the fuel tank had ruptured? Then there would be the chemical clean up for the fire service to deal with?


I could respond to this, with this video which shows that an electric car is 20 times less likely to catch fire than an ice car. In one year alone they had just 23 EV fires and over 3000 ice vehicle fires in a country with 40% of the total number of cars on the road (in Sweden) being EVs.


And all the talk of Ev fires taking hours to put out and hundreds of gallons of water goes out the window when I look up and find out that they now have EV fire blankets that can put out an EV fire in minutes, and prevent any further re ignition from occurring.

This video shows that it took them a good 8+ minutes after setting a literal fire under the car before the battery went into thermal runaway. They drag the blanket over it at just before 11 minutes and the fire is out and dropping in temperature within a minute.



The car in the parking garage as it turns out was dealt with in this way and the car was then dragged out of the garage and the blanket left on the car preventing the fire from restarting and removing the risk from the building.

EV fires are not the issue that the press or YouTubers like to make out, but it sells papers and grabs headlines, it also helps turn people off EVs which may be a little beneficial to the oil industry

 

[Greasytrucker]

Wow! I learnt something new yet again.
Although looking at the conversion costs, they are more than most of my vehicles cost to buy.

You want to try driving the useless things, had one on the agency a few years ago whilst earning a bit extra They couldn’t pull the skin off a rice pudding. Look good on paper but not practical as have no range and If you run out of gas they have to be recovered as (at the time) you couldn’t regass one at the roadside. Still a lot of work to do before a majority of HGV’s run on gas!

 

[bugsymike]

After spending all my working life on ICE vehicles I admit to a bias, I accept the progress EVs have made and there is certainly a place for them, what I do feel is they should make that on their own merit, rather than by Governments persuaded by environmentalists to push up ownership through legislation meaning the public pay the costs as usual.

 

[PuntoHowTo]

After spending all my working life on ICE vehicles I admit to a bias, I accept the progress EVs have made and there is certainly a place for them, what I do feel is they should make that on their own merit, rather than by Governments persuaded by environmentalists to push up ownership through legislation meaning the public pay the costs as usual.

I don't drive an electric car yet.

I do agree that electric cars even now are not for everyone and do not always meet people's needs, but the arguments of "they catch fire" is just not a valid argument against them, if you look into the data.

The view of electric cars is in my opinion being heavily skewed, some of which can be explained by 100 years of the oil industry with endless budgets pushing their products and burying any negative press about anything related to oil as much as possible.

Mechanically speaking they are far more simple than any ICE car often with only one moving part under the bonnet, and the motors themselves have been shown to do hundreds of thousands of miles without any significant wear because induction motors have no areas of friction to wear out. Aside from grease in bearings the motors themselves could in theory run indefinitely without needing any significant maintenance.

and I agree the arguments should be made on their merits, unfortunately they are spending most of their time trying to fight off backlash based on floored argument that they don't have time to talk about the benefits.

Really electric cars catching fire is such as non-argument we shouldn't even give it the time of day, yet it has become almost a joke that whenever there is a car fire the first place people go is to blame it on an EV.

 

[portland_bill]

To be honest he’s pandering to his audience, people watch his channel because he posts about EVs catching fire and he keeps providing videos of EVs catching fire.

This is because that is what he specialises in, understanding causes, and effects, and investigating as many as he can, to help steer methods and techniques to deal with them. That is what his channel is about, so that is what he presents. Would you prefer he put out a video about hip replacement? Or stick to his specialisation?

Here one observation I had about his two example cars, the ford truck had a fairly straightforward cabin fire.

He did explain that the majority of ICE fires are caused by electrical faults, which was the cause of this truck fire. Teh consequences of such fires is something they are used to and can deal with quickly. Fuel fires with ICE vehicles are much less common. So he's demonstrating the most common cause of ICE fires. Then comparing them with the most common cause of EV fires. Most are not old enough to have minor electrical fires, that will come later.

The ev He used in the parking garage, he posed that we observe just how quickly the fire took hold In the ev, yet the video only shows a large amount of smoke around the vehicle before it catches fire. We actually don’t know how long that car has sat smouldering and smoking before it finally burst into flame

An EV battery fire typically starts with a faulty cell, which creates gases. The heat also produced causes adjacent cells to follow. The gases are highly flammable, and vent under pressure, then due to the heat, spontaneously combust. From the venting under pressure, to the fire, like the video shows, is very quick. The battery can be gassing inside for a while, but as soon as they vent, the fire is almost instant, so very little warning. Not a good place to be.

I could respond to this, with this video which shows that an electric car is 20 times less likely to catch fire than an ice car. In one year alone they had just 23 EV fires and over 3000 ice vehicle fires in a country with 40% of the total number of cars on the road (in Sweden) being EVs.

Less likely, but so much more devastating when they do.

And all the talk of Ev fires taking hours to put out and hundreds of gallons of water goes out the window when I look up and find out that they now have EV fire blankets that can put out an EV fire in minutes, and prevent any further re ignition from occurring.

The blanket doe not put out the fire, it contains it. Allowing it to burn and smoulder under its blanket, preventing the flammable and toxic gases excaping. They do not prevent re-ignition.

Showing a blanket in use, when the demonstrators set the fire is all well and good, but when an EV catches fire, it is rarely right outside an appropriately equipped fire station. The time taken for the fire service to arrive will give the extremely hot fire time to damage a lot around it. I think this video had posts from two people who had lost their houses to EV fires.

 

[PuntoHowTo]

PB, we are somewhat stuck and an impass, I am giving you all the data showing you that EV fires form an absolutely tiny amount of the vehicles that catch fire if you would care to look at the actual data. This isn’t some one off report from a far flung country, it is a situation that repeats over and over again.

Contrary to popular belief they very rarely catch fire, and when they do they have already developed quick save and effective methods of dealing with them.


EVs are still in their infancy, the first mainstream Teslas only went on sale in the Uk 10 years ago, yet from a safety perspective the chance of an ev catching fire is considerably less likely than a non ev catching fire, think your chances of being run over are statically and twice as high. What you should be asking here is why are so many non Ev cars catching fire….? It’s not just a bit, we are talking less than 100 EVs a year compared to thousands of non EV cars. Why? Are the fuel tanks of ICE cars exploding all over the place? You have said yourself that cabin fires are more common than fuel fires, well EVs have no fuel like a conventional car, and have more electrics which is often blamed rather than the fuel? So why are EVs not twice as likely or more than twice a likely to catch fire? Interestingly when you add more electronics and ICE like you find in a hybrid the fires go up massively, there has to be some consideration to the probability that, the big tank of highly flammable fuel sloshing about in the ICE/hybrid cars is probably having a bearing on the fact there are so many many more car fires in ICE cars

Of the thousands of non ev fires the vast majority of which are not reported in the press, how many cause a house to be burned down or a person to be killed or seriously injured. With the tiny amount of EVs that actually catch fire which is already a very small number, arguably there is statically not only more chance of you non ev car catching fire but also of you being injured because of that fire.

And yes batteries emit some unpleasant things when they burn but so do ice cars.. in fact engines are emitting some pretty horrible things from burning fuel inside them that pollute the air all the time.

I can show you evidence you show a YouTube video! What evidence is this? Your thinking is clearly horribly bias, not based in fact or demonstrably accurate in any way shape or form. Literally you could spend a whole day or two putting every EV fire out in the UK and still not even scratch the surface of the time spent putting out fires on cars with an ICE or hybrid drive train. You’re inflexible to the idea that EVs are not the big fire risk you want them to be.

Rather than post or wasting you time with any more YouTube videos, go read the national office of statistics, the fire safety reports from fire services, the reports coming from other countries who have looked into this. You are the epitome of what my original point was some way back now, which is people are being led blindly to believe that EVs are bad, and one of the way they do that is by making a big deal if and when one does catch fire, but the evidence doesn’t support that, not one little bit
It is also worth noting that they are developing the batteries all the time and the latest EVs (from hthe bigger brand) are designing their batteries with save ways the battery can vent if it fails, they have failsafes built in to monitor and prevent hot spots and thermal runaway and if all else fails the most recent cars have built in flame traps and alerts to minimise the risk from any fire or vapour that is produced.

So Please, come up with something better than “EV catches fire’ as an argument, because the evidence is not on your side and you cannot just opt to ignore what you don’t want to believe in and choose to give credence to what you do want to believe in (well people do, but that is a subject for another time)

 

[portland_bill]

PB, we are somewhat stuck and an impass,

Not an impass, I'm quite enjoying this silliness. You are getting yourself apparently well wound up about something I don't really care about, and whatever your opinion is. I'm intrigued by your strong desire to defend the things. I still do not want an EV. I get to drive them as part of my job, many different ones, and not one have I thought desirable to own. Most I'm glad to walk away from.

Contrary to popular belief they very rarely catch fire, and when they do they have already developed quick save and effective methods of dealing with them.

Whilst rare, the consequences are far more severe, that is the point, not the frequency, but deffenders all point to frequency. We do not hear about all those ICE fires, because they are not newsworthy, due to being less damaging, more just inconvenient.

Are the fuel tanks of ICE cars exploding all over the place?

As said before, the liquid fuel is rarely the cause of an ICE fire, and often not involved even as a consequence. But the electricity of an EV, is the fuel.

And yes batteries emit some unpleasant things when they burn but so do ice cars.. in fact engines are emitting some pretty horrible things from burning fuel inside them that pollute the air all the time.

Firefighters when dealing with an ICE fire, wear their normal protective gear. With an EV, they add breathing apparatus to avoid brething the toxic fumes. Whilst unpleasant, the emissions of a burning ICE vehicle are less toxic, by a big margin. Always a good idea to walk away, upwind of either.

You’re inflexible to the idea that EVs are not the big fire risk you want them to be.

Now you are putting words into my mouth. I have never said that I want EVs to be a fire risk. You are arguing against your thoughts, not mine.

You are the epitome of what my original point was some way back now, which is people are being led blindly to believe that EVs are bad,

Not my words, yours. Again, arguing against your own thoughts.

So Please, come up with something better than “EV catches fire’ as an argument,

Don't think I've ever stated that, so again, your thoughts, not my words. All I've done is highlight reports. From those, you have assumed my reasons.

 

[PuntoHowTo]

You don’t care, but you’ll write long multi quote posts to attack EVs and defend ice cars.

You don’t care but you’re invested enough to watch videos from a bloke who only posts about ev fires…..



You keep saying the consequences of ev firs are more damaging or worse in some way, but 1500 cars in Luton airport would beg to differ. Not to mention the other numerous and serious vehicle fires around the world which didn’t involve EVs

A good measure of the impact of a car fire would be the dollar cost of the damage involved. How many £££ does thousands of ice cars catching fire compare to tens of EVs


Go watch your video above… they are wearing breathing apparatus to put out the petrol truck that somehow managed to catch fire with no ev battery.

My original comment before you chimed in was that the industry and public as a whole are heavily bias against EVs, if a car catches fire the immediate thought people now have is it must be an EV the Luton airport carpark fire is a prime example of this to the extent the fire service had to issue multiple statements to say it was not an EV and that they would publish the results of their investigation in time because the media were constantly bombarding them with requests for information about EV involvement in the fire..

If you can’t accept the evidence, which you continue to argue against then I’m not putting words in your mouth you clearly have a strongly held belief that EVs are worse contrary to what the evidence says it would appear to anyone reading this that you want to prove EVs are worse. But so far you haven’t offered anything to back this claim up.

Wound up? I thought we were having a discussion but it would seem by your own admission you’re just trolling. You can’t have a discussion with someone who is just deliberately and belligerently saying things they think is upsetting or annoying the other party for their own entertainment, I thought better of you, and made the mistake of thinking you were actually interested in the subject.

Remember I don’t have an ev either, I’m not some ev evangelist but I am interested in the human behaviours that lead people to focus in and over exaggerate, in this case the scourge of ev fires when actually the problem is infinitesimally small. The video you posted above and put so much belief in is a prime example of that, thousands of people subscribing to a channel because it confirms something they want to believe is a bigger problem than it actually is.

 

[portland_bill]

You don’t care, but you’ll write long multi quote posts to attack EVs and defend ice cars.

I have not attacked EVs, merely highlighted interesting videos, that might be of interest to others. You have interpreted my actions, and applied your own arguments against your interpretations. Your assumptions are wrong, yet you continue to argue against them.

You don’t care but you’re invested enough to watch videos from a bloke who only posts about ev fires…..

I've said before, he only post about EV fires, because that is his speciality. There are other videos, doctors who specialise in one partuicular area of medicine for example, so perhaps we should criticise them for their speciality too?

You keep saying the consequences of ev firs are more damaging or worse in some way, but 1500 cars in Luton airport would beg to differ. Not to mention the other numerous and serious vehicle fires around the world which didn’t involve EVs

You'd prefer an EV alight outside your house, than an ICE?

Did you see the news about 9 EV buses burning in Taiwan. One story suggests they'd been out of service for a while, as the manufacturer went bust, so they were just sitting quietly, when one apparently woke up. Then the fire station that burnt down, due to a small battery on charge in one of the truck's compartments. A tiny fault inside the battery can cause a big mess. Manufacturing standards need to be much higher if safety standards are to be met.

 

[PuntoHowTo]

I have not attacked EVs, merely highlighted interesting videos, that might be of interest to others.

Did you see the news about 9 EV buses burning in Taiwan. One story suggests they'd been out of service for a while, as the manufacturer went bust, so they were just sitting quietly, when one apparently woke up. Then the fire station that burnt down, due to a small battery on charge in one of the truck's compartments. A tiny fault inside the battery can cause a big mess. Manufacturing standards need to be much higher if safety standards are to be met.

You’re not attacking EVs…… yet here are a load of examples of why I shouldn’t want an EV

But my assumptions are wrong ?