Car park spaces should become wider and burning electric cars dunked in baths of water, under proposed Government guidelines to prevent battery fires spreading out of control. The Telegraph has more.
Ministers have been told that battery-powered vehicles pose a medley of risks in indoor car parks, which could render 1960s-era fire safety laws dangerously out of date.
Areas of concern addressed in a Government-commissioned report included explosions of flammable vapour clouds emitted by electric vehicle batteries, as well as jets of fire and toxic water run-off from firefighting.
The report, from consultancy Arup, which makes a series of recommendations for changes to fire safety rules, said that there was a “high degree of uncertainty” about data on the fire risks of electric cars and that it is “not yet understood” whether their batteries become more of a fire hazard with age.
The consultancy has previously advised the Government on a number of infrastructure issues, including how to replace lost fuel duty revenues from electric vehicles with toll roads and higher income tax.
Solutions presented in the report included increased space between parked cars as well as greater distance between indoor car parks to manage the risk of fire spreading between cars and buildings.
It said indoor and multi-story car parks should adopt larger parking bays to help firefighters reach burning vehicles, with one example in the report proposing a 90cm to 1.2 metre gap between vehicles.
It comes as residents of a Labour-run council in London fight to block plans to build an electric bus garage under a development of thousands of new flats amid fears battery fires could cause a “volcano”.
Fires in indoor car parks can cause widespread damage to other vehicles. The Luton Airport car park blaze, though not said to be caused by an electric vehicle, is estimated to have destroyed up to 1,500 cars.
The report, published in July, goes on to detail how water used to put out burning electric cars is contaminated by toxic chemicals in lithium-ion batteries and can pose a “significant ecological impact” in some areas.
It suggested that in these locations that water used to tackle blazes would need to be contained and treated at a plant before being released into sewage.
On top of this, it warned that around 13% of electric vehicle fires reignite, sometimes hours later and multiple times, adding the fires were harder to extinguish than those of petrol or diesel cars.
Not mentioned is that larger car park spaces will inevitably mean higher parking charges – yet more costs piled onto the beleaguered motorist.
Worth reading in full.
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Can someone anyone please point out 1 upside of these lumbering expensive flaming bursting monstrosities? I look at the ppl who drive them and internally mutter to myself a 4 letter word beginning with c. To me they are like the ppl who collaborated with the Nazis in occupied France.
It is clearly to identify themselves as a c. It saves everyone wasting their time getting to know them first.
And it’s really helpful to identify them from a distance with their green flash number plates.
Yes those are particularly irritatingly smug.
I have no problem with an electric car. It is just a piece of technology, like a turbine or a heat pump or a solar panel. ———The problem I have is that government is trying to coerce us all with their picking of winners and losers when the free market should be the place that decides what we buy. People know best how to spend their own money and I suspect if left to their own devices they would not choose an electric car, a heat pump, a wind turbine, or a solar panel.
COVID vaccines for cars. Put into use with no long term safety data and the solution to the damage is anything but taking them off the market.
Something must be done. Such as paying consultants like Arup some fees. A cynic might observe that attempting to invest in improved fire fighting tactics is the wrong end of the stick, compared with reducing the risk of them occurring in the first place, especially with large containers of flammable material immune to water treatment. They should lean on the manufacturers and improve the relevant standards to make such problems less of a risk to start with. Bound to be some conflicts of interest, though, such as changed regulations for rapid battery charging etc.
At least larger car spaces will mean less cars, which should mean that old multi level parking garages don’t collapse from the weight as often.
Plus more jobs for firefighters. See, EVs have loads of benefits.
It is only a matter of time before a fire breaks out at an EV manufacturing plant and it burns a hole through the Earth’s crust and sets of a catastrophic reaction in the Earth’s core.
Well, that is my synopsis for a new disaster movie.
Damaged EVs need 50 times more storage space..
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/bills/cars/damaged-electric-cars-quarantined-fears-explode/
Wonder why your premium has gone up..
Nick Hudson’s perspective on identifying the scams – of which EVs are but one…
https://twitter.com/nickhudsonct/status/1713980307135725619
Many high-rise residential buildings have garages in the basement. It’s only a matter of time before a fatal EV fire afflicts non-EV owners. It’s time to ban lithium cars from all indoor parking facilities.
“It’s time to ban lithium cars ….” Full Stop.
OMG!
There won’t be that many BEVs even when ICE cars are banned because the electricity generating and grid infrastructure will not be there, nor is it planned.
Now write this out 500 times a day.
There are engineers who reckon you could develop a perfectly usable petrol car that does 100 mpg. If we did have cars with that level of performance it would be interesting to see how they would stack up against an EV? In my view there is a lot to be said for pushing the development and use of ultra high efficiency petrol engines.
Although of course that would still entail the use of the demon oil. Also it would not help to end the era of cheap easy personal transport for the masses, which does seem to be part of the agenda with all this net-zero motoring stuff.
Quinton Wilson is the Globalist useful idiot who pushes EVs on GBN & TTV.
Is it me or are there more reports of cars spontaneously combusting?
I seem to read about one on most days of the week now.
Fashions come and go in the news media. Not every occurrence is reported, and when they are, it pays to be sceptical about alleged causes, especially when they stick in peoples memory before moving on to the next item worth reporting etc.
Arup are a construction consultancy I think. Obviously they don’t consider the news when coming up with their idea of dumping burning BEVs in a bath of water, let alone common sense. The car transporter ship that went down off the Azores was in a very large bath and that didn’t stop the fire. Perhaps they are suggesting a bath to go alongside every car parking space?!! Are there enough cast iron baths available? Plastic ones would be as useful as chocolate teapots.
Has anyone even thought of the Tata EV battery plant in Somerset? It’ll be the Delorean of the UK. Closed within 2 years because nobody is stupid enough to buy an EV. Its the Betamax of the automotive industry.
I have better idea. Why not ban EVs altogether until a safer more efficient alternative can be developed? Simples.
That is the only bit of GREEN News I have heard. Bigger car parking spaces so Mrs Higgins and her 3 brats and a pram don’t score our new BMW in Sainbury’s. ——-I am just kidding ofcourse. But spaces are way too small.
Did the report calculate how much CO2 will be generated by demolishing and re-building every multi-storey car park in the country?
Or the risk to fire-fighters in putting out the blazes?
How about the risk of an EV fire on a RoRo ferry, or the channel tunnel?
And what about a major pile-up on a motorway which results in several burning EVs – particularly a “SMART” one with no hardshoulder? Or on a motorway bridge? The carriageway/infrastructure will be destroyed.