Cont: Luton Airport Car Park Fire IV

Vixen said:
This is another reason I don't tend to share personal stuff because it almost always turns into a humble bragging competition between the various participants. And it is not very interesting to know who owns what outside of the context of a topic.
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I can't quite see what sort of bragging (humble or otherwise) it is to reveal that I own an 18 month old MG4 (with a 51 kwh battery, which may be relevant). I perhaps omitted to mention that it is in "Holborn Blue" which I think is rather fetching. It would, however, enable people to check on how my car operates, if I had for some reason made a bunch of statements about its operation that didn't appear to make a blind bit of sense.

Boasting that you want a car with a manual gearshift so that you can exercise your driving skills does sound a bit like bragging to me. Hence my comment that fetishising the compromises and work-rounds of the ICE (e.g. the horrendous noise they make and the need for inefficient and cumbersome gears) is not the mark of an intelligent person.
 
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Here_to_learn said:
Intriguing! That has to be the specific car I used to drive! Can't be more than one of that model!
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When discussing the increase in EVs on the roads here, someone remarked "you can hold your breath between Teslas". I once parked at the garden centre and realised I was bracketed in the car park by three Tesla model 3s - in front, to the right, and at ten o'clock. As I left, another one was entering, and as I drove on to find the next shop I was heading for I passed two more.

All six of them were white.
 
Vixen said:
Somebody on Twitter. As it was i Liverpool at New Year and attendees likely came from all over the northern part of the UK it seems reasonable to me that they would have such a system fitted. (However, these are perfectly safe if fitted correctly.)

If instead it was 'a dodgy A LPG conversion' how come the driver was never charged with some offence or other?
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:rolleyes:
 
I suppose he could have been done under the construction and use regs.
But as the car was destroyed in a huge fire there wouldn't be much for a VOSA inspector to look at.
It's just a road prohibition and small fine anyway.
 
It was Euan McTurk's opinion that the conversion was dodgy. I'm relying on his grasp of the subject to be correct that it was an LPG conversion. (I wonder how the authorities found out that the car had been modified? Like maybe it was recorded on its DVLA documentation and they actually examined the vehicle?)
 
I drive a 1900 Lohner-Porsche hybrid.

Not really, but I was surprised to learn that hybrid automobiles predated lithium batteries by decades. I actually drive a 2022 Toyota Corolla hybrid, because it gets 54 mpg. First hybrid I ever drove was a 2001 Prius. You had to insert the fob into a slot and then press a start button three times, iirc. Took me about an hour to figure that out and leave the airport rental lot.
 
JayUtah said:
We arrived at that guess a while back, but it's still just a guess.
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All I did was summarise what info vixen has given - a petrol MHEV is a pretty confident assumption to make (not that it is really relevant to the rest of the thread of course).
The problem with the argument is that if the driver in the Luton fire was driving a mild hybrid, the battery is not big enough to have the effects Vixen wants to believe she sees. Those batteries are generally one order of magnitude smaller than a serial/parallel hybrid and two orders of magnitude smaller than a full electric vehicle.
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Correct . We know the car that started the Liston fire was not a hybrid.
I’ve also seen a number of videos of late model Range Rovers with fires starting in the front passenger side (as others here have probably cited).
 
It is interesting to note that that same model has had several different issues with fuel leaks between 2010 and 2016 (although they only mention the petrol models, the diesel model has the same tank, so I don't see why only the petrol models have the recall???) with the high pressure fuel lines having a rubber seal leak on the fuel tank itself, as well as tanks actually cracking at one of the seams- so it isn't exactly an unknown issue they have had fuel delivery system issues...

And how strange- the fuel lines from the tank to the engine just happens to run down the passengers side of the body from the back to the front of the vehicle- exactly where the fire appears to be coming from in the video released of the car on fire at Luton airport???

(it even has a joint directly under the passengers seat underneath!!!)

Screenshot-from-2024-10-15-10-20-13.png

"Curiouser and curiouser!" cried Alice
 
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EHocking said:
While it would have been much easier for Vixen to clarify things in her first post, I think she has much more fun trolling the forum with vaguely worded tidbits to generate a larger pile-on.

Anyway.
Vixen's claims about her car, while irritating, are not necesserily untruths, e.g.,

Vixen claims she drives ;
1. a manual transmission, hybrid car that is
b. classified in Finland for car tax as a petrol car. Additionally
iii. it is possible that you may not be able to discern if the car is a hybrid from its dash display.

All entirely feasible.

1. If it is a manual transmission "hybrid", it can only be a mild hybrid, often referred to as an MHEV. These cars have electric motors and batteries that supplement the petrol engine when accelerating and also restart the petrol engine when it is in stop/start mode (e.g., engine shuts off when car is stationary).

b. MHEV motors in this configuration cannot propel, or "drive", the car in full electric mode, they only suplement the ICE. Since they never drive in electric mode, it is quite reasonable for the Finnish Transport and Communications agency to classify the car as a "petrol" car.

iii. Since the battery/electric motor never work as the sole power source in a powertrain independent of the ICE and are simply recharged (usually under braking), there is little need for those elaborate dash displays that full hybrids "need". The display is mostly likely a simple battery icon showing when the battery is being charge and/or when it is holding charge.
Such as those icons shown in this explanation of dash lights.

So, while it would have been much simpler for Vixen to tell us this, rather than trolling us for pages and pages, the descriptions Vixen has given of the car she drives, though painstakingly extracted from her, are all characteristics of a petrol engined MHEV.
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Wouldn't that still be categorised by Traficom as "Petrol/electric, self-charging" (rather than "petrol") but not subject to the driving power tax as it is "powered primarily by petrol"?
 
Rolfe said:
It was Euan McTurk's opinion that the conversion was dodgy. I'm relying on his grasp of the subject to be correct that it was an LPG conversion. (I wonder how the authorities found out that the car had been modified? Like maybe it was recorded on its DVLA documentation and they actually examined the vehicle?)
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An LPG conversion would be a much more likely conversion for a petrol Land Rover than a night heater.

The former let you use a much lower taxed fuel and made economic sense in a large thirsty vehicle. The conversion would have to be disclosed for insurance of course but even if it wasn't the propane tank and extra fuel injection parts would be very obvious to investigators.

The latter generally use diesel fuel (so not suited to a petrol car) and tend to be fitted to long distance truck cabs. (Who sleeps in their Land Rover overnight?)
 
Mojo said:
Wouldn't that still be categorised by Traficom as "Petrol/electric, self-charging" (rather than "petrol") but not subject to the driving power tax as it is "powered primarily by petrol"?
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We only have Vixen’s word for it that her car is classified as “petrol”.
 
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