Luton airport fire report is available

The BBC, etc. may well have been given information by the emergency services - and the vehicle was identified as a non-hybrid diesel in the initial phone call that reported it.

Or the emergency services let the media know, when they asked, that the driver called in the fire and reported it as a non-hybrid diesel car.

Can you post links to BBC articles that back this up please.

It was on BBC radio reporting. If it’s survived as a written record you’ll doubtless be able to find it.

However, this report, written a few hours after the blaze started, mentions a diesel-powered car but with no other information such as make or model:

Hybrids are 'diesel powered'

Well, the fire service might have had some idea very early The initial 999 call was ‘received by Bedfordshire FRS Service Control at 20:47:20 hrs by Crew Manager Service Control B from the driver of the Range Rover that was on fire. When questioned by Service Control, the caller advised their car was a diesel Range Rover that it was located on the third floor.’

nib

No one ever denied it was a diesel range rover, they just said 'with a lithium battery in a hybrid configuration'

A phrase omitted by the 'official' report.

A hybrid with a lithium battery - that would make it a plug-in then, most likely. My hybrid has just a wossname battery with a range of about 1.5 miles, on battery.

My very dim recollection of parking in there is that battery vehicles benefitted from lower charges and were restricted to a particular floor. Perhaps floor 3?

In message snipped-for-privacy@mid.individual.net>, at 12:33:42 on Mon, 25 Nov 2024, Tim Streater snipped-for-privacy@streater.me.uk> remarked:

Who is "they"?

Indeed, they say "non-hybrid".

I'm not sure there even was a diesel hybrid Range Rover Sport in 2014.

Land rover do a diesel evoque with a small battery - its not a plug in at the age this car was, just a car that starts its diesel engine when the battery cannot cut the mustard.

The battery is under the passenger seat - where the fire was in the photos.

about 50 miles of EV only in it.

There was.

In message <vi1tq2$2pbcd$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me, at 13:24:18 on Mon, 25 Nov

Yes.

Wikipedia lists one!

nib

Yes, I remember that. Even at that moment I thought it was very odd they mentioned 'diesel' in the item at such an early stage when the BBC is normally so particular about thoroughly fact checking their stories. ;->

Under what badge ? The Range Rover Sport 2014 is here, four trims.

Whereas the report description is Range Rover Sport

*******

This is an example of the battery, in the year 2019

There is also a description of a start/stop battery being in the back of the car. There might not be room in the front of the car, especially something say supercharged, that needs room for engine components.

I'm looking for anything that correlates with a jet of fire on the front of the car (as seen in that video). If there is lithium in a thing like this, it's more likely to be in the back of the car (where there is room for it). The drive train makes it more unlikely that a battery pack would be fitted mid-vehicle (and down low where the drive shaft would be).

Paul

From your first link:

I found one thread on the topic of the hybrid battery, and everybody and his dog wanted to repair the car and "only charge 9000 for the pack". I would not trust these cowboys further than they can be thrown. They know what money is.

It all started, when an owner commented they had a problem with something electrical, and instead of the start/stop battery, the "technicians" decided the £9000 pack needed to be changed out.

My brother is a mechanic. This is my brother.

"I hate working on electrical problems"

They teach them in school, the needle trick, of piercing wires and checking for voltage on them.

This is not an education system that starts with high voltage packs, "comfort modules" and assorted bus-connected crap under the hood. If a mechanic learns about these, it's on the job, and there aren't likely to be enough knowledgeable people to bootstrap a whole industry.

The local Honda dealer had the right idea. A team was sent from Japan, to work in the shop. They showed the other mechanics, how to work on some of their new cars. Eventually, the team from Japan moved on to the next shop and site. That's an example of skills upgrade, conducted right in a shop. But that is *still* not going to make a mechanic like electricity, or be adept at debugging electrical problems.

I was hoping the report would have enough information, that the details would be unambiguous. I guess I was expecting too much. Like, if the vehicle had a VIN (or an engine or transmission component serial number allowed tracing to a particular VIN), then the report would have a VIN number. And then, running the VIN would give the necessary detail about what it was.

Paul