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[Continuation] Luton Airport Car Park Fire IV

Full disclosure - I drive a 2015 Fiat Punto, 3 door hatchback. It was all I could afford. Sorry about the humble-bragging :rolleyes:
 
Just so you all know, I don't drive and so don't own a car of any type.

But I HAVE seen nearly every episode of Wheeler Dealers.
 
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EHocking said:
...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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We arrived at that guess a while back, but it's still just a guess. 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.
 
Vixen said:
For goodness sake. If you want to know how I was stalked and how even thinking about it causes massive trauma, you need to start a thread on it, and I dare say, the mods would have to put up a box warning it would strongly trigger anybody even reading it. She-eesh. I have told you what type of car I have. Full stop.
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Not sure of your point in saying this as I haven't seen anyone doubt you were stalked. What I have seen are assertions that divulging the make and model of your car would in no way enable anyone to personally identify you or enable any stalking behaviour, as you drive a normal mass-market vehicle. No one is asking what color it is or what you've got hanging from your rear-view mirror.
 
SteveAitch said:
Just so you all know, I don't drive and so don't own a car of any type.

But I HAVE seen nearly every episode of Wheeler Dealers.
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So you know a lot more about repairing cars and how they work than most people.

I watch Bangers And Cash, a 'fly on the wall' with a classic car auction house just over the Moors from me in Thornton Dale.
They haver a good YouTube channel that has vids of every car and bike they are going to auction each month and do a livestream of the auction.
Like all of them, it's mainly online bidding these days.
 
Vixen said:
For goodness sake. If you want to know how I was stalked and how even thinking about it causes massive trauma, you need to start a thread on it, and I dare say, the mods would have to put up a box warning it would strongly trigger anybody even reading it. She-eesh. I have told you what type of car I have. Full stop.
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No you haven't. That's a lie Vixen.

Point to exactly where you told us.
 
Andy_Ross said:
So you know a lot more about repairing cars and how they work than most people.
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Indeed a lot of people know a lot about cars, including the people who deal with cars in the aftermath of disasters involving them. Investigators found Timothy McVey (the Oklahoma City terrorist bomber) by having only a fragment of the vehicle's drive train, for example.

While it's clear Vixen is going to prolong her tantrum over having to actually support her conspiracy theory with fact while wagging her finger at everyone who's being mean to hear, she has not yet reconciled her "It was still a hybrid all along" claim with the positive and detailed identification of the vehicle's power source by the fire service investigators. Initially they can say it is "believed" to be a diesel vehicle, since at that time all they had was the driver's answers over the phone. Then later they can say they've confirmed the vehicle type after physical examination, which evidently extended to an attempt to determine the ignition source.

The fact remains that you're going to notice an electric motor and a battery if you're examining a car to determine what kind of car it is. Hence the only way Vixen's "I'm still right" ploy works is if the fire service investigators are either incompetent or lying. She doesn't want to be responsible for that inescapable consequence, so she just pretends the facts don't exist.
 
Vixen said:
No, I was talking about BEFORE lithium batteries became trendy as eco-friendly. Surely car manufacturers had some experience of how they worked before marketing them as a special feature and a hyped-up USP...?


Product development and all that. The idea didn't just come out of the blue.
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This is 100% false. There are regulatory requirements for different regions globally and failure to disclose such things would land manufacturers in big trouble. Manufacturers also do not put one-off models on the road due to fear of litigation in case of an accident. I have over 28 years in the auto industry and have dealt with validation of regulatory requirements in vehicles.

For the record, 2024 Buick Envista Aventir. I have owned a Chevrolet Volt hybrid in the past as well.
 
MarkCorrigan said:
No you haven't. That's a lie Vixen.

Point to exactly where you told us.
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More to the point, please Vixen, show us where you told us exactly what car you drive.

1999 BMW blue Z3 2.8 for sunny days.
2006 Merc black SLK 55 AMG daily driver

The wife is on her 3rd hybrid since 2018 all Toyotas, currently 2023 1.5 CHR Hybrid. Each of the 3 hybrids made you damn sure that you knew you were driving a hybrid.
 
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Today I am driving our 2010 Fiat Panda 1.2. It is purple. And slow.

And I can reveal the exact model designation, 169AXB1A, but that does not help when I go to the motor factor looking for a cam cover gasket and they offer me three brands which their computer says are correct for my car but all of them are wrong.

Anyway, the relevant bit is that I bought it used and drove it for quite some time before I discovered it had air conditioning. There was no hint on the dash that it had this option fitted but I eventually spotted the telltale pipework while checking the oil. Turns out if you push the fan speed dial instead of turning it, a light comes on to tell you the AC you didn't know you had is running.

The thing is, it doesn't matter what car Vixen drives. The pertinent point is whether a 2014 Range Rover Sport HEV has anything on the dashboard showing clearly that it is a hybrid and not a simple diesel, as this whole digression is about Vixen's suggestion that it was possible for the owner to be unaware.
 
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2019 Tesla 3 LR. Black exterior, black leather interior. Really identifying myself here.
 
2014 Toyota Venza, white. 6 cylinder ICE - gas guzzler! Needs new all weather tires, which will be installed on Thursday. Go ahead, stalk me.
 
Jack by the hedge said:
Today I am driving our 2010 Fiat Panda 1.2. It is purple. And slow.
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In Italy, I drove a silver Fiat Uno until I got the Audi. I sympathize with the complaints about the performance. It was far easier to be anonymous in the Fiat; the Audi turned some heads.

The thing is, it doesn't matter what car Vixen drives. The pertinent point is whether a 2014 Range Rover Sport HEV has anything on the dashboard showing clearly that it is a hybrid and not a simple diesel, as this whole digression is about Vixen's suggestion that it was possible for the owner to be unaware.
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It would be nice to return to the position where Vixen's desperate suggestion is absurd on its face. That her car allegedly evinces no sign of its being a hybrid is just one of a handful of distractive ploys to try to quench the smell of the absurdity.

To carry your point further, it doesn't matter whether the vehicle dashboard says anything. We aren't beholden to the driver's belief or to some manufacturer's efforts to hide things from the driver. The vehicle itself was inspected by experts. If those experts are not incompetent or lying, their findings are dispositive.

We're doing this only because Vixen insists on some validation for her belief that the smoke and flames she observes and the purported propagation of the fire are still somehow anomalous and that it's still possible for her to have been right. The proposal doesn't provide a better answer for how the fire started or why the car park burned down.
 
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Disbelief said:
This is 100% false. There are regulatory requirements for different regions globally and failure to disclose such things would land manufacturers in big trouble. Manufacturers also do not put one-off models on the road due to fear of litigation in case of an accident.
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Can you imagine trying to insure one?
 
I can tell you that the car I WISH I drove is the Nissan Cube, because apparantly I love cars that look stupid in unusual ways. I used to drive a 2nd gen Scion XB instead, cause of the Cube getting unanimously vetoed by the entire family.

I'll admit a Cube would be a lot closer to being a personally identifying vehicle than a Scion XB. I think they only ever sold in the ballpark of 75,000 of them in the US.
 
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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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