As shown in every film or TV program when a car crashes :) You rarely see the explosive charges set by the special effects team :)
Wasn't it the Italian Job(???) where someone pinched the engine from a car between when it was seen driving and a minute later being pushed over the cliff?
Not available for London in particular, but national figures for 2019 show around 46% of car fires were started deliberately.
Only if you are arguing that electric cars are either more or less likely than ICE cars to be torched after being stolen.
Similar to what I found for 2002, around 38,000 set alight after being stolen and another 17,000 derelict set on fire after being dumped. Approx 100,000 cars reported stolen.
More the case of which type of car is more likely to be stolen for joyriding and then set fire? A modern EV or an older ICE vehicle? An expensive car is more likely to be stolen for resale somewhere.
However, the question under consideration is cars that are involved in fires. From the figures I gave, the probability of that being an EV is two and a half times as high as it being an ICE car. So, even if it is assumed that none of the EV fires were deliberate and 46% of the ICE cars were, EVs still come out as more likely to be involved in a fire.
We have had many city transit buses leak fuel. I've seen a trail on the road, where the driver didn't know it was leaking, and the entire tank-load ends up on the road. And the bus is hauled back to depot, by their huge hauler (they have two haulers, for stereo).
Well, for perhaps two of those buses, the leak was near the hot engine, the diesel vehicle caught fire. I don't know if those could be repaired and returned to service. The engines in those buses seem to run pretty hot, because on some units, you can smell something like "hot hoses" smell. I don't think typical automotive diesels, run quite as hot.
The provided PDF, is worth reading, if you care about these fires. It suggests some of the fire scenes are not arson, but the cause of the fire (on an ICE car) might be electrical rather than fuel.
Paul
Diesel ignites readily when sprayed onto something hot like an exhaust manifold, as does iso46 hydraulic oil and I have reason to know that. Whereas spilling petrol onto a hot exhaust does not. This is why petrol resists burning in a SI engine until the spark initiates it.
The fuel is probably not relevant (except as fuel for combustion rather than the source of a fire). Most vehicle fires are probably electrical.
Even petrol isn’t that easy to ignite. You can drop a lighted cigarette into it and it won’t ignite. Hollywood get it wrong all the time.
Tim
Yes, not having lit cigarettes around I have not tried that but as long as no flames are about petrol will not burst into flames if dripped onto hot charcoal, get this wrong and the vapour cloud can be spectacular, presumably how a daisy cutter bomb works.
Look at this fire. It's an open field fire. Burning multiple vehicles. And it is years back. How many BEVs existed when this picture was taken. Zero.
And maybe this is why around five transport ships by now, have burned so nicely (we know of two that sank). Maybe the vehicles on board, and their fire design, aided the event.
*******Looking at this picture again, isn't this fire on top, on the roof ? That's a lot of fire, for an open field fire. Look at the smoke pattern. Doesn't look windy. When the Caddy burned, the fire looked nothing like that.
A place like an airport, will have proper water supplies and mains hookups for this, so the fire people should have a good supply.
Paul
My wife's cas fire was almost certainly petrol leaking from the carb/fuel line onto a hot exhaust.
But without another source of ignition petrol won’t ignite under these conditions. Brake fluid will (or used to). Formulation may have changed. An oil leak would be more inclined to burst into flames on a hot exhaust.
Tim
They'll try to cover that up, but it's inescapable from the degree of damage caused that EV(s) are culpable, even if the original car which burst into flames turns out to be non-EV (pretty unlikely). If there are EVs 'sprinkled throughout' that car park, they'll cause every car around them to go up in flames in a sort of chain reaction. It's also highly likely that the heavier weight of EVs made the building's collapse far more likely, which is precisely what happened. We never used to see car park conflagrations like this in the past when there were no EVs. it's an entirely recent phenomenon. :(
I have never seen any suggestion that the Kings Dock fire (by the Liverpool Echo Arena) was caused or exacerbated by EVs. The loss of over 1,000 vehicles was attributed to the fire spreading by lateral and vertical fire spread with running fuel fires.
Report by the BRE for the UK government in 2010 recorded a change of views on the likelihood of fires spreading in multi-storey car parks. It concluded work once a severe fire started it would spread laterally even to cars separated by an empty parking space. Down to things like modern cars having more plastic including insulation, wiring and plastic fuel tanks. It noted EVs were likely to become more common and bring new fire risks but didn't base its conclusions on them.
There are some numbers for petrol here.
that was cited last week
On 02/10/2023 12:23, Robin wrote: > On 02/10/2023 11:45, Frank wrote: >
3.4% likelihood of vehicle fires according to their study.' >>
They could again be comparing apples with oranges if there is no clue on how they are analysing the data.
They state age of the car is a contributing factor and there is a lot more very old ICE vehicles on the road and few old EVs so the number of fires per 1000 NEW cars sold is somewhat of a meaningless figure if they are not normalising the data to take into account the age of the vehicle nor the number of each type on the road.
The fire hazard recalls for ICE vehicles were all for potential electrical faults. Again the data is presented in a way to show that there is a bigger problem with ICE. If 400,000 models of one ICE car have been sold compared to 80,000 of one model of EV and then 400,000 beats 80,000. The data presented shows that there were near a equal number car models recalled for ICE and the new electric technology.
I really don't know if the risk of a fire in a new EV or a fire in a new ICE vehicle is higher, or if the ratio of risk changes by the time the vehicle is tens years old but from reading the above link I'm still not sure.
Further, if the fire figure for ICE in 'n' cars and the fire figure for EVs is 'y' cars why is the figure for Hybrids much greater than n+y? Why no data into which part failed? Could it be that the owners of Hybrids are the ones who purchased for the reasons of battery range limitations and are doing very high mileage rather than those EVs just used for the school run and going to the shops each day?
I am also wondering whether US based figures are useful for the UK. That figure of 1.5% of ICE cars is very far from the 0.04% given by the UK based Fleet Manager. As I said in my first post, the risk seems to depend upon which report you read.
I think its possibly a wiring fault in a diesel car, but if there were any EVs about I doubt if they would help put it out, let us say. One thing that worries me about this is that it surely must have had CCv, and one would also hope some form of fire prevention. I am given to believe that this was the top of the building, I'd have thought that it would have had some of those angled in sprinklers. At any rate, it does not seem that the car park owners are blameless here, as we have all probably experienced a car fire, and they can take hold very quickly given the amount of plastic flammable materials in most cars these days.Its usually caused by a wiring loom failure either made by chafing the cables or heat melting the insulation. Even a normal 12v car battery can sink a heck of a lot of amps into an almost dead short. Brian
Looking at the video of the car that is thought to have started the fire, the position of the vehicle relative to the direction arrow on the floor and to other cars, suggests to me that it was being driven in or out of the car park when it caught fire.
It is part way down this page:
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