Bearing in mind Mr. Hopkinson made his statement whilst the building was still burning - 11 Oct 2023 - as of that stage all he will have had would be the CCTV image and possibly the ANPR as each vehicle drives in. Although the CCTV might show a certain car on fire, it may not necessarily be the first car. Likewise, the driver may not have been spoken to yet, either. So, no, he would not have been lying. There has been no update since then.
Aside, of course, from the official website of the brigade, which states that the vehicle was a diesel without caveats.
So not a case of lying but more a case of a perceived lack of transparency, which is no surprise given the incident needs to be investigated and that takes time.
Re social media many of the people making claims it didn't look like a diesel fire claim to be firemen of long service or ex-firemen or their mate's dad works at Luton airport. Yes, a lot of this will be ******** but you only have to note the lack of transparency over the ma make and model of the car in question to understand that Hopkinson was gagged - for whatever reason, noble or legal - from stating it was a Range Rover. This indicates to me classic brand reputation limitation crisis management. Being of a cynical bent, it would not surprise me if Prime Minister Rishi Sunak got Home Secretary Suella Bravermann to put pressure on the police and fire brigade to avoid naming Jaguar Land Rover, given the recent £4bn deal handed to Tata who own JLR. The last thing the government needed was a public scare about Range Rover or hybrid cars (and statistics show fires are common in hybrids). So yeah, definitely a gag in place there.
Yes, that's probably it. Probably the prime minister put pressure on the fire brigade not to mention the make and model.
But again, what advantage would be gained? Unless the final report is filled with lies, then within some months, the truth will come out. Even if (and I doubt this is so) the credibility of the fire brigade isn't badly harmed by the misleading initial information, the fact is that everyone will know it was a hybrid Range Rover (or whatever). The exact same information will be common knowledge.
On the one hand we had a view of the vehicle from the back supposedly taken by another driver nearby and this is the one published widely but not verified by any official source (headlines: 'Could this be the car?'). Several days later, an new X account or was it Instagram or similar, claiming to show a view from the front, which I don't think the national press have published. This claims to show a number plate E10 EFL and the person who provided it claims to have checked with DVLA to show it is a Range Rover Sport 2014. But this could be a photoshop and not authentic at all. The first photo as widely published, seems to actually show a short form number plat, with just two to four characters and is hard to decipher.
What has arisen from this is a joke doing the rounds that the driver must have been some kind of 'toff' to have spent a large sum of money on a personalised number plate, and of course, Range Rover, is the vehicle of choice for the Royal Family. Could the culprit be Prince Andrew, haha, as if he'd drive himself to an airport and Luton, at that. Or perhaps a flashy young footballer is the other joke. One urban myth already developed is that the driver was a self-important business man who left the car ablaze, ran into the nearby airport saying had an urgent flight to catch and could someone sort out the car. He was then arrested, the joke goes, on his return from this important meeting.
I have no comment, since none of this is relevant to my point.
So a lack of transparency and information is how wild rumours start.
Ah, so then the hypothetical gag order has had a seriously negative effect. Gosh, these lawyers are just stupid.
In addition, in he UK a hybrid would not be referred to as an EV, as the specs are quite different.
Yes, that's nice. It's not particularly relevant, but whatever.
From the Land Rover web page:
MEV - Mild Hybrid:
https://www.landrover.com/electric/range.html
Well, its webpage isn't very informative but if it was a Range Rover Evoque and not a Sport then there is a high chance it was part of a recall due to a fault in recent years.
ISTM that by 'arresting a 30-year-old man as a precaution,' it takes the heat (so to speak) off Range Rover the brand and a cynic might wonder if that is the aim. Think about it. The guy is on bail (not in custody so there is no time limit to charge him) suspected of 'Criminal Damage'. Now criminal damage can be a very trivial offence. It might no refer to the driver at all, although that will be the implication of the released news. It could be the early reported individual said to have tried to break in to the car park to retrieve some personal belongings. Perhaps he kicked down a gate or something. If it was the driver - hence the headline news - how is it criminal damage as for it to be criminal damage there has to be
mens rea. If the guy had to leap out off the car because of an inherent fault in that car model, how has he shown intent to cause criminal damage if it was 'accidental' as also claimed by Mr. Hopkinson in his early press statement? So to put this guy under arrest as 'a precaution' makes people wonder what the game is.
I'm willing to wait and see what the arrest was for and who was arrested. I don't see any reason to speculate on this. While it seems probable that it was the driver arrested, it wouldn't be shocking if it was someone else.
You, of course, instead leap straight to the conclusion that the arrest was mere distraction, but you don't really know a damned thing about the arrest until the identity and charges are brought. If none are ever brought, then we'll likely never know the reason for the arrest.
Lastly, it is far too soon to decide the cause or origin of the accident. If you listen to this eye witness here, he describes quite a vivid scene of a flame shooter flying across the top deck and all the cars lighting up together.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0gkqs6c
I agree that it's too early to know the cause. As far as the origin goes, the experts sound pretty certain.
Honestly, if I were the conspiring lawyers issuing the gag order, I would have insisted that they not reveal the origin at all rather than deviously imply that the Range Rover was an internal combustion engine. We'd still have the issue that a final report must come out, so I'm not sure this is a better strategy than reporting what is known, but surely the fewer details provided makes any coverup an awful lot easier.
You still haven't given any clue what advantage is to be gained from postponing the truth that the initial vehicle was a hybrid (hypothetically speaking). The final report will of course take time and the actual cause of the fire in the first vehicle might never be known, but you've suggested repeatedly that this fire could only have involved a lithium battery in the initial vehicle. If this is so apparent to an amateur like you, then the fire brigade will necessarily come to the same conclusion and hence it will be reported (unless their dishonesty is boundless).
So what will be gained by not saying it was a hybrid until some time in 2024 or conceivably 2025? (Again, I don't know how long the investigation will take, but two years seems safe enough. It took five months for Liverpool, but I guess that coverups take longer than that.)
