2 minutes ago, iantt said:

Did you read it all in it's entirety?

Lol, no. I'm not sure I'll live that long!😀

3 hours ago, Eric Bloodaxe said:

Lol, no. I'm not sure I'll live that long!😀

I'm still here and I did! Not that I understood some of it. 

Quite a few stories appearing about Groupe Renault and Stellantis trying to revive small cars:

https://www.carmagazine.co.uk/car-news/industry-news/renault-stellantis-small-cars/

https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/renault/366843/want-new-small-car-you-probably-cant-afford-one-and-car-bosses-blame-eu

https://www.topgear.com/car-news/business/stellantis-and-renault-want-save-small-car

https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/miliband-net-zero-policy-threat-national-security-warns-ex-head-of-mi6-3708309

Who'd have thought it........?😀

58 minutes ago, Eric Bloodaxe said:

Who'd have thought it

Well I'm shocked to the core 🤣

https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/05/zodiac_maritime_electric_car_fire/

Ship abandoned off Alaska after electric cars on board catch fire
26 comment bubble on white
Water, water everywhere, but it would just make it worse
icon
Iain Thomson
Thu 5 Jun 2025 // 07:28 UTC

US Coast Guard and civilian vessels have rescued 22 sailors off the coast of Alaska after some of the electric cars they were transporting caught fire.

The good ship Morning Midas - a roll-on, roll-off ferry that was delivering 3,000 vehicles from Yantai, China, to Lazaro Cardenas, Mexico - is currently around 304 miles south of Adak, Alaska, the US Coast Guard tells us. The sailors on the vessel, operated by UK-based Zodiac Maritime, noticed the fire at around midnight UTC on 3 June and were unable to stop the conflagration.
Shipping fire map

Right on the date line. Source: Zodiac Maritime

"The vessel is loaded with around 3,000 vehicles, 800 of which are electric vehicles," Zodiac Marine told The Register. "Smoke was initially seen emanating from a deck carrying electric vehicles."

"The crew immediately initiated emergency firefighting procedures using the vessel’s onboard fire suppression systems. However, despite their efforts, the situation could not be brought under control."

The crew made a distress call and boarded lifeboats. Nearby merchant vessels responded and rescued the mariners, the Coast Guard tells us. The ship is now likely to continue burning until specialized fire-fighting crews arrive and attempt to halt the blaze.
Water, water everywhere. And none of it useful

Everyone knows firefighters use water to douse fires, and that the liquid surrounds ships at. So why was this fire so hard to stop?

Because water and electricity don't mix, and salt water is an even better conductor than fresh water. When salt water covers a lithium battery, it can cause a short circuit that causes the battery cells to overheat in a sequence of rapid reactions, a process called thermal runaway that can cause the entire battery to burn.

Thermal runaway can happen days after immersion, thanks to minerals left over as the battery dries out, and even if the battery is completely discharged.

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Battery fires are also notoriously difficult to extinguish after they've started, and tend to burn hotter and faster than other blazes. Sometimes they reignite after firefighters put them out. One fire marshal told CNBC in 2022 about a Tesla that burned so hot, it melted part of the road.

Firefighters in areas hit by hurricanes and flooding have some experience dealing with battery fires.

As Hurricane Milton approached Florida last fall, Florida State Fire Marshal Jimmy Patronis warned electric cars and other battery-powered kit " are ticking time bombs.”

"In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, we have seen nearly 50 fires caused by lithium-ion batteries with 11 of those fires being caused by EVs."

Japanese shipping line Mitsui O.S.K is suing Volkswagen and insurers after a 2022 fire aboard the car transporter Felicity Ace. The vessel, packed full of luxury cars, allegedly caught fire when a lithium battery in a Porsche shorted out and ignited.

While the Felicity Ace’s crew escaped to safety, authorities left the fire to burn itself out. Attempts to tow the vessel to port failed and it sank in the Atlantic, leading to the loss of nearly 4,000 vehicles.

The operator of the Morning Midas hopes to avoid a similar outcome. "We are working closely with emergency responders with a tug being deployed to support salvage and firefighting operations," Zodiac Maritime told us. "Our priorities are to ensure the continued safety of the crew and protect the marine environment." ®
 

 

5 minutes ago, eddie eastwood said:

https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/05/zodiac_maritime_electric_car_fire/

 

Though, when Teresa May enshrined 'net zero' into UK law, then Boris Jonson enshrined the abolishing of ICE cars in 2019 under the radar and kept it a secret, how on earth could they have foreseen how cr*p the development of battery cars were. Unless they knew something about the subject and followed the actual science. Sure that wee girl St Greta told them they were wonderful. 🤣🤣🤣

Wait till you see when the 1st multi story car park perish with lives lost for the real blame story to be tossed about...

The whole EV thing is 'Smoke and Mirrors' (forgive the pun).

Governments are embracing EV's because they know about all the problems and realise the golden opportunity it gives them to:-

1. Price the average motorist off the road.
2. Restrict the travel of it's citizens.
3. Offer them full remote control and tracking of EV's
4. Will have the support of the next generation of St. Greta's when they start to ban EV's on safety issues.

I can see the reasons behind it, but at first glance this seems to fall into the "you couldn't make it up" category:

https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/uk-trump-deal-threatens-co2-shortage-meat-beer-nhs-operations-3730594?ico=most_popular#:~:text=Sir Keir Starmer ’s US trade deal risks,meat and beer production%2C industry bosses have warned.

 

I know that building management companies have begun to make plans to segregate electric vehicles from the rest in parking structures specifically because of the increased risk and difficulty in extinguishing fires. In the States, most parking structures were not designed with the intention that they could have fifty or more vehicles so intensely ablaze and not have any structural damage. Taking the whole multi layer situation surrounding the implementation of the EV into account is greatly reducing its perceived benefit to consumers. It doesn’t cost any less than an ICE vehicle and it comes with many unique problems that can present a significant risk to public safety and health.

A good business case can be made for hybrid and EV route delivery vans given the parameters of their usage. The opposite is true for an electric light pickup truck. When you use it for it’s intended purpose, towing and or hauling, it’s range rapidly evaporates.

I own half a dozen vehicles and I don’t think I will ever have a place in my garage for something that is less useful the more I use it to do a task.

Did anyone watch the programme on EV safety broadcast on 5 on Wednesday?

I was interested, but not surprised, to note that some of the safety issues discussed are also applicable to ICE vehicles but this was not mentioned.

Usual ch5 poor journalistic reporting. 

On 6/27/2025 at 6:45 PM, mjt said:

Did anyone watch the programme on EV safety broadcast on 5 on Wednesday?

Still haven't got round to watching that one, but I did watch the previous weeks last night on the general pros and cons of EVs. That one seemed fairly balanced** to me, and made a good case for a nearly new EV at the prices available now. 

It also gave a more positive picture of battery life and put the replacement cost in perspective. Look at the prices we see here for new engines from Ford, for example. It bore out the recent report by Autocar about an ex-Uber Tesla. That had done 176k in just under 5 years, with at least 45% of its charging done on rapid chargers, but still had 90% capacity.

** Where I did take issue was the flagging up of several (perfectly valid) security concerns as if they affected EVs only. Any modern car has got a high degree of connectivity and stores a lot of data about the owner.

A couple of friends have suffered major hacks in the last 12 months and in one case I'm sure it was because of a mobile "paired" with her car. She's a former senior banker so very security conscious and had covered all other bases - but had never thought about the mobile/car link.

On 6/27/2025 at 6:45 PM, mjt said:

Did anyone watch the programme on EV safety broadcast on 5 on Wednesday?

Did finally catch up on this. I thought most of the points raised were valid, and it did seem reasonably balanced to me - they did emphasise some very good points about EVs as well as less good.

But as with the other documentary, a lot of the issues - particularly driver "aids" - are applicable to any modern car, ICE or EV and result from poorly thought out legislation and this headlong rush towards autonomous vehicles.

The "big" safety issue was I guess battery fire but they did stress the rarity of this with EVs. Must say, I still feel "safer"in a diesel than a petrol car due to the lower volatility of the fuel. I once saw a demo in controlled conditions of igniting petrol versus trying to ignite derv - quite a difference!

 

22 hours ago, Eric Bloodaxe said:

as with the other documentary, a lot of the issues - particularly driver "aids" - are applicable to any modern car

That was what I was criticizing about this programme, that they failed to even mention that in passing. Otherwise, like you, I thought it was quite well balanced and covered some things other programmes have missed.

Although EV fires are rare as the number of vehicles increases they will inevitably become more common and the main problem I see is the difficulty/impossibility of putting them out as they create their own oxgen supply. Added to that is the risk of reignition days or even weeks later. It seems to me not enough thought has gone into dealing with these issues.

Smaller communities are growing concerned about the fire issues with electric vehicles, particularly because of the extreme difficulty in extinguishing the fires and the environmental damage and health hazards associated with the smoke and fumes as well. In the states there are very few fire departments in small towns and cities that have the equipment to deploy foam fire suppression on these very intense fires. Foam fire suppression systems are primarily used at larger airports for aviation fire suppression. 

30 minutes ago, Scottman said:

Smaller communities are growing concerned about the fire issues with electric vehicles, . 

Surely Trump put a stop to all this EV nonsense for you or did I misunderstand his declaration just after being elected? (My understanding was that he gave the choice of car back to the people, gas or EV, you choose?)

14 minutes ago, StephenFord said:

Surely Trump put a stop to all this EV nonsense for you or did I misunderstand his declaration just after being elected?

There was a lot of stuff like this back in January, but I don't recall seeing much since:

https://www.ft.com/content/fa199037-c50d-4474-bc76-23abe2ed43cb

He is definitely going to end the taxpayer funded incentives for EV. The whole thing was a scam to begin with. The infrastructure was not built even though the money to build out a decent start of infrastructure was already spent! Those were actually the payoffs to the special interest groups. It wasn’t intended for actual infrastructure development. We simply don’t have enough capacity in our electrical generation system to support the addition of even two thirds of the EV’s that the government had intended to build ( with the taxpayer money, by the way!).

 They basically wanted to build the EV fleet and then worry about how to get them recharged “later”. I have no doubt that they would have preferred to implement controls on when we could charge and then regulate how often or how far we would be allowed to drive our vehicles. I believe that is what the real plan was.

Just now, Eric Bloodaxe said:

There was a lot of stuff like this back in January, but I don't recall seeing much since:

https://www.ft.com/content/fa199037-c50d-4474-bc76-23abe2ed43cb

Sadly, not a subscriber to FT but you're right, I haven't heard much since January either...

2 minutes ago, Eric Bloodaxe said:

There was a lot of stuff like this back in January, but I don't recall seeing much since:

https://www.ft.com/content/fa199037-c50d-4474-bc76-23abe2ed43cb

The EV incentive elimination is in the so called “Big beautiful bill” that is currently being fed into the sausage grinder of debate in our house and Senate.

I will go on the record again by saying that I have no problem with the production of electric vehicles. I just don’t want to subsidize them and by doing so create a false impression that there is a substantial market for them.

Oh! And the Big beautiful bill also contains a couple of tax bill for the EV owners in terms of road use taxes and some kind of clawback tax for the infrastructure scheme that siphoned off a few billion dollars of the taxpayer dollars. Seems fair enough to me!

28 minutes ago, StephenFord said:

Surely Trump put a stop to all this EV nonsense for you or did I misunderstand his declaration just after being elected? (My understanding was that he gave the choice of car back to the people, gas or EV, you choose?)

As the old saying goes “ the horse is already out of the barn”. Meaning that the fire issue is not going away just because Trump cuts the incentive to buy one.  My small town has a major highway that connects Detroit with Chicago just two point something miles north of the village. We get in excess of one hundred emergency calls a year for multiple vehicle accidents, some involving cars and large semi trucks. Our little fire department doesn’t have a fire apparatus that can dispense fire suppression foam. We send our firefighters out to help. But they are going to be in real trouble if they can’t put out fire where people are trapped in their cars. One department about thirty miles west of us encountered a burning EV and fortunately a large “backhoe” trenching machine was very nearby and they used it to dig a hole by the roadside and then pushed the burning car into the hole and buried it! Which I thought was pretty brilliant!

There was an interesting item on our local BBC News today about a different battery technology that has been developed by this Cambridge-based company that can be charged from 10% to 80% in under five minutes and has a lifetime of at least 4000 fast-charge cycles.  It looks as if it has a lower energy density though so the range will be less which might put manufacturers off from adopting it.

I only mention this because it shows that new technologies are still under development which may well supplant Lithium-Ion in the not-too-distant future.

3 minutes ago, mjt said:

I only mention this because it shows that new technologies are still under development which may well supplant Lithium-Ion in the not-too-distant future.

Yes, there are all sorts of developments going on in battery and motor** technology which may greatly change the picture by the time ICE is phased out. Maybe they'll solve the fire issue also.

** Both the technology of the motor itself, and also it's location. I believe VW are planning a 4WD version of the forthcoming ID 2 where the rear wheels will have "motor in wheel".