Luton Airport Car Park Fire

Status
Not open for further replies.
Vixen said:
I do apologise for not memorizing your earlier post. Perhaps it is a good idea to quote what you are referring to because posters seldom have the time to search for older messages. OK, I accept your son was referring to putting out fires and it was someone else who pointed out the relative incidents of car fires according to type.
Click to expand...
No-one's expecting you to memorise anything, the post is there near the top of the first page. And it was me that linked to the stats, too.
 
Vixen said:
I do apologise for not memorizing your earlier post. Perhaps it is a good idea to quote what you are referring to because posters seldom have the time to search for older messages. OK, I accept your son was referring to putting out fires and it was someone else who pointed out the relative incidents of car fires according to type.
Click to expand...

This is disgraceful. When you misquoted him it was his only post in this short 2-page thread. 'not memorizing' (etc) suggests people are placing onerous burdens on you, when it's far from that. You're shifting blame from the guilty (you) to the innocent.

Shame on you.
 
Last edited:
theprestige said:
There's no need to speculate. Fire officials have already said it wasn't a lithium battery fire.
Click to expand...

Here is the only direct quote I can see:

“We don’t believe it was an electric vehicle,” Andrew Hopkinson, chief fire officer for Bedfordshire Fire and Rescue Service, said. “It’s believed to be diesel-powered, at this stage all subject to verification.” Autoblog

Please do share your citation.
 
Is it your intention to insinuate the chief fire officer is wrong until they declare they have verification? Or to continue after they have it?
 
Vixen said:
He claims to have deciphered the car plate number but I think he had to guess some of it. Another person claims the car is in fact a Land Rover Hybrid Evoque, which does have a battery just below the passenger seat area. All this is guesswork and specualtion.

Why can't the police or fire brigade just let the public know what model and make it was. The driver escaped uninjured so it is not as if they have no idea.

I have checked, and the statement it was a diesel is preceded by the words, 'We believe...' or 'It is thought...'

Surely they must know?
Click to expand...

There’s no such car as a Land Rover Evoque, which suggests the person isn’t really a car person. There is a Range Rover Evoque, which has been made in PHEV form in the UK since 2020, I believe.

Based on the shape and the rear lights, it looks more like a Land Rover Discovery Sport than an Evoque, to my untrained eye.

I suspect police don’t want to prejudice any case by stating the car was X when it could have been modified with Y.
 
Vixen said:
ETA: I note the statistics on the site linked that:



But one wonders whether the age and mileage of the vehicles were taken into account, as newer vehicles aren't expected to show wear and tear as much as older ones.
Click to expand...

How would that be relevant for the current situation?


And does it not give you pause that you should get something so wrong, that was trivially easy to check?
 
Vixen said:
You think current news topics should be repressed and that people should not speculate as to why a car burst into flames in that manner?
Click to expand...
Who has said anything about repressing anything, much less the news reports about the fire? And people can speculate all they want. But when they confidently proclaim utter ******** like:
"Diesel isn't particularly combustible."

"It must have been an EV or Hybrid as only a lithium battery would explode like that."

EV batteries cause flames associated with the passenger side. (Why? Batteries are located centrally because of weight/handling issues.)

“I can remember car parks exploding and bursting into flames long before electric vehicles were invented…NOT" (Back in the early '90s I passed a small sedan on the side of the highway that was completely burned out to a blackened shell. The interior was gutted, the tires were burned away, and the asphalt under the car was scorched and melted.)
Click to expand...
...then it is fully justified to point out that they're talking out of their asses.

But almost every single comment in the DAILY MAIL article is claiming it must have been an EV.
Click to expand...
Then almost every single person commenting (are Daily Mail readers anything like FoxNews viewers?) is an idiot who doesn't know what he/she is talking about, as per the above quotes.

Internal combustion automobiles are full of not only highly combustible fuel, but considerable amounts of combustible lubricants, plastics, rubber, upholstery, and high amperage electrical systems that can easily cause ignition... The tires alone, once ignited, will burn fiercely.

So I am BAAAAAA-AAAAD for daring to start a topic to understand why this has aroused so much scepticism amongst the UK public.
Click to expand...
Stop trying to deflect criticism of the conspiracy theories you've referenced by acting as though said criticism constitutes a personal attack against you.
 
GlennB said:
It didn't. There was partial collapse, but most of it is relatively unaffected. Plenty of images online will confirm this.
Click to expand...

One thing that seems lost on the conspiracy theorists is that all the cars that burned can't have been EVs. It's almost like a car caught fire while in close proximity to many other equally combustible vehicles and caused an even larger conflagration.
 
Aaaaaand round we go again.....

The authorities know full well that this make/model/year of car was a straight diesel vehicle. But as gypsyjackson pointed out, there's still a (very remote indeed) possibility that at some point the car was modified to give it a full or hybrid electric powertrain - so they cannot say with 100% certainty that it was a straight diesel vehicle until they've carried out a forensic examination of the wreckage.

And, with weary predictability, the CTers will pry open that most minuscule of doubts and convert it into a sizeable chasm of "why are they only saying they believe it's a diesel car - what aren't they telling us?!". Including - again, wearily predictably - the OP in this thread.
 
Foster Zygote said:
Did you actually read the article? They're reporting on the conspiracy theory itself. It's not particularly well written or thorough, but it definitely isn't supporting speculation that it was due to an EV catching fire.
Click to expand...


Indeed. But nevertheless it's a variation on the clickbait-y "Could the car have been an EV?" press dick-move: "some people are saying......."

After all, people are more likely to have their interest piqued by that sort of article than by a more honest article which simply reports the known facts: that a (almost certainly) regular diesel vehicle rapidly caught fire in a public car park*.


* a very rare but entirely explicable happening, especially when one factors in the reality that literally millions of motor vehicles are parked in tens of thousands of public car parks across the UK every day, so sooner or later it's actually likely that an event like this will happen.
 
Vixen said:
So now LONDON EVENING STANDARD is speculating:

https://www.standard.co.uk/tech/electric-cars-catch-fire-evs-luton-car-park-b1113029.html
Click to expand...

Foster Zygote said:
Did you actually read the article? They're reporting on the conspiracy theory itself. It's not particularly well written or thorough, but it definitely isn't supporting speculation that it was due to an EV catching fire.
Click to expand...

Indeed.

It even says, "EV FireSafe found about 0.0012 per cent of electric passenger vehicles caught fire between 2010 and 2023. This compares to a 0.1 per cent risk of diesel- and petrol-powered cars catching fire, more than 80 times the rate found for electric vehicles."
 
Foster Zygote said:
Who has said anything about repressing anything, much less the news reports about the fire? And people can speculate all they want. But when they confidently proclaim utter ******** like:

...then it is fully justified to point out that they're talking out of their asses.


Then almost every single person commenting (are Daily Mail readers anything like FoxNews viewers?) is an idiot who doesn't know what he/she is talking about, as per the above quotes.

Internal combustion automobiles are full of not only highly combustible fuel, but considerable amounts of combustible lubricants, plastics, rubber, upholstery, and high amperage electrical systems that can easily cause ignition... The tires alone, once ignited, will burn fiercely.


Stop trying to deflect criticism of the conspiracy theories you've referenced by acting as though said criticism constitutes a personal attack against you.
Click to expand...


Nonetheless, people who claim to know what they are talking about (for example, self-professed garages and dealers) insist that a diesel fire looks very different from a battery fire and that the Luton Airport car park fire appeared to be one emanating from a battery because of its appearance of 'exploding' and its speed of spreading.

No-one is saying that diesel cars never catch fire, they are talking about the appearance and spread of that fire.
 
LondonJohn said:
Aaaaaand round we go again.....

The authorities know full well that this make/model/year of car was a straight diesel vehicle. But as gypsyjackson pointed out, there's still a (very remote indeed) possibility that at some point the car was modified to give it a full or hybrid electric powertrain - so they cannot say with 100% certainty that it was a straight diesel vehicle until they've carried out a forensic examination of the wreckage.

And, with weary predictability, the CTers will pry open that most minuscule of doubts and convert it into a sizeable chasm of "why are they only saying they believe it's a diesel car - what aren't they telling us?!". Including - again, wearily predictably - the OP in this thread.
Click to expand...

If the car was a diesel hybrid or a diesel that had been modified in some way so as to cause, what looks to many people ,an obvious electrical or battery-source fire, why doesn't the fire officer, owner of the car or the police just say so? That would nip all the speculation in the bud.
 
Orphia Nay said:
Indeed.

It even says, "EV FireSafe found about 0.0012 per cent of electric passenger vehicles caught fire between 2010 and 2023. This compares to a 0.1 per cent risk of diesel- and petrol-powered cars catching fire, more than 80 times the rate found for electric vehicles."
Click to expand...

I am not sure that probability theory tells us anything about what type of fire it was.

Simply saying, well petrol combusts more easily than diesel, doesn't mean therefore it must be a petrol fire. Most commentators seem to think it was definitely an electrical/battery-source fire from the appearance in the CCTV video.

It matters not an iota what the probability of a diesel hybrid fire is - or any other type.
 
Vixen said:
LondonJohn said:
Aaaaaand round we go again.....

The authorities know full well that this make/model/year of car was a straight diesel vehicle. But as gypsyjackson pointed out, there's still a (very remote indeed) possibility that at some point the car was modified to give it a full or hybrid electric powertrain - so they cannot say with 100% certainty that it was a straight diesel vehicle until they've carried out a forensic examination of the wreckage.
And, with weary predictability, the CTers will pry open that most minuscule of doubts and convert it into a sizeable chasm of "why are they only saying they believe it's a diesel car - what aren't they telling us?!". Including - again, wearily predictably - the OP in this thread.
Click to expand...
If the car was a diesel hybrid or a diesel that had been modified in some way so as to cause, what looks to many people ,an obvious electrical or battery-source fire, why doesn't the fire officer, owner of the car or the police just say so? That would nip all the speculation in the bud.
Click to expand...
Once again, it appears you have not bothered to read what you are replying to.
 
Vixen said:
Nonetheless, people who claim to know what they are talking about (for example, self-professed garages and dealers) insist that a diesel fire looks very different from a battery fire and that the Luton Airport car park fire appeared to be one emanating from a battery because of its appearance of 'exploding' and its speed of spreading.

No-one is saying that diesel cars never catch fire, they are talking about the appearance and spread of that fire.
Click to expand...

Why would a garage mechanic or car salesman be an expert on fires?
 
Vixen said:
Once again I am six steps ahead and am replying to what he will have posted several posts along.


What 'forensic examination'? Just ask the flippin' driver.
Click to expand...

I expect they already have. Any doubt remaining would be about something like an unapproved modification, which the owner might be reluctant to admit to, and they are simply keeping their options open until they are 100% certain.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Back
Top Bottom