Exploding with the force of a bomb blasting 2,000°C super-heated jets of flame into surrounding areas, melting and decomposing nearby structural materials including metal and concrete, and sending vast amounts of toxic fumes into any enclosed atmosphere. Thinking about putting the conflagration out – forget it – run (if you can) for your life. Welcome to a future where electric cars become common and are to be found packed like sardines into ferries and underground car parks beneath apartment buildings. A recent freedom of information request from the insurer QBE found that electric vehicle battery fires in the U.K. jumped by 46% last year. Car and bus fires were up 33% and 22% respectively and it is noted that there are now three battery fires a day compared with two in 2022.
QBE provides the following data from 50 U.K. fire brigades, although some figures are incomplete. For instance, fires involving e-trucks, which quadrupled last year, were only provided by seven brigades.
It is a sobering thought that any one of the incidents catalogued above had the ability to turn into a major catastrophe with potential loss of life. For their part, insurance companies around the world are on an obvious high alert for the potential consequences of widespread adoption of EVs, whether voluntary or forced by state diktat. The leading marine insurer GARD notes:
Lithium-ion battery fires can be difficult to extinguish. Additional although infrequent events can result in Li-ion batteries experiencing thermal runaway, a chain reaction leading to a violent release of stored energy and flammable and toxic gas, potentially resulting in large scale thermal events with severe consequences.
Avoiding these bomb explosions, or thermal events as they are usually called, was likely to be behind a reported Chinese move in places across Zhejiang Province banning EVs from entering underground garages. One sign is said to instruct vehicle owners to divert to a nearby parking lot with “wide open spaces”. It is reported that local property owners took the action following 11 intense battery fires in Zhejiang’s capital Hangzhou last May. Last year, Havila Kystruten, which operates car ferries around the coast of Norway, banned the transportation of electric, hybrid and hydrogen vehicles. Internal combustion engine fires are easy to extinguish and can be handled at sea, but EVs present enormous challenges. In fact they are almost impossible to put out. Havila’s managing director Bent Martini said an EV fire would require external efforts, “and could put people on board and the ships at risk”.
Fire and explosion are not the only risks with EV cars. The specialist freight insurer TT Club is seeking to put greater emphasis on the critical dangers of toxic gas emissions associated with lithium-ion fires. “The failure of such batteries has the potential to occur with no prior warning, or with such speed that there is typically no time to react to any warning signs,” it observes. Once thermal runaway starts there are only seconds to escape breathing in a lethal and potentially fatal cocktail of gases such as hydrogen fluoride, hydrogen chloride and hydrogen cyanide, as well as carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide and methane. TT Club notes particular dangers from hydrogen fluoride. The gas can be easily absorbed by the skin and lungs, depleting vital calcium and magnesium levels, “which can result in severe and possibly fatal systemic effects”.
A recent essay in Watts Up With That? reported that the ferocity and speed of lithium fires could not be overstated. “Lithium fires are more like tossing a match into a box of fireworks,” it was said. To illustrate this point, a YouTube video showing an e-scooter battery explosion in a Chinese apartment was posted.
It was noted that the people in the video were lucky to escape with their lives. This of course was just a scooter battery, many times smaller than a car, truck or bus power pack. The author asks that even if firefighters controlled the blaze, “would you really want to live in a house contaminated by lithium?” Sooner or later, it was suggested, insurers will catch on that there is a significant litigation risk from people claiming their health was damaged by exposure to highly toxic lithium.
As we can see, insurers are becoming increasingly aware of the risks posed by EVs, not least the dangers faced by people transporting potentially unstable lithium batteries around the world. But the general public seem to be catching on as well, with EV sales falling off a cliff around Europe. In the European Union, EV sales fell by 44% in August and this was the fourth consecutive monthly drop. The European Automobile Manufactures’ Association has demanded “urgent action” to prevent further decline.
It is difficult, however, to see what can be done in the face of increasing hostility. States can mandate increasing penalties for making hydrocarbon cars, as the Mad Miliband is doing in the U.K., but it risks destroying the traditional car industry with the loss of many thousands of direct and indirect jobs. This of course doesn’t seem to worry the weird wonks in charge at the U.K. energy department, who are busy with plans to slash high-paying jobs in deprived areas across many industrial processes. Miliband is secure at the moment to follow his destructive ideology, but his survival as a political force should not be taken for granted once adult realism starts to dawn. The public is becoming aware that EVs are an ecological and safety menace. It is debatable whether they have a lower ‘carbon footprint’ than internal combustion engines and the potential safety risks they pose scarcely bear thinking about. Combine that with poor second-hand values and range anxiety (constantly having to apologise for being late!) and it is becoming clear that they are another expensive and inferior change imposed by politicians hell bent on following a Net Zero fantasy.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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Marianna Spring can be briefly heard on this BBC Radio 4 programme broadcast this morning, ‘AntiSocial – Covid vaccines and misinformation’ – but don’t let Marianna Spring put you off, I said ‘briefly’ and it is in fact an excellent programme, in which Spiked’s Brendan O’Neill is given the opportunity to make his case for free speech, and the presenter, Adam Fleming, makes a genuine attempt to be fair to all sides.
The whole series of ‘AntiSocial’ programmes on BBC Radio 4 are surprisingly fair and excellent, not the usual BBC propaganda, but much more open, and are well worth listening to.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001k837
Wild horses wouldn’t drag me to a BBC programme on misinformation. I wonder how many thousands of Roberts radios (other brands available) have been switched off for good over the last 3 years of unabating BBC propaganda.
Very much in agreement on point one and sadly I’m one of the thousands with a Roberts radio that hasn’t been switched on for the best part of three years.
“The originator of the New World Order conspiracy theory almost certainly believed his.”
Lol. Imagine a world in which powerful people globally talked to each other, shared information and collaborated (when it suited them) in order to further their own wealth and power, and pretended that everything they were doing was for the public good. Only a loony would imagine such goings on.
See Piers Morgan and his pitiful ‘apology’.
Speaking of disinformation, isn’t that all we’ve been bombarded with these past 3 years? So with that in mind, here’s a 13min video illustrating some prime examples of disinformation being spouted by Moderna’s CEO, Walensky, Fauci and more, plus more on the clot shot harms, with a particularly unpleasant clip at the end which is basically child abuse, in my opinion.
https://rumble.com/v2ek51m-who-killed-trista-rand-paul-grills-moderna.html
Misinformation, disinformation and fact checking are weapons used by established, traditional media to suppress competition which has flourished online and in social media.
It’s simple old fashioned gangster tactics used to defend “their turf”.
What’s the point of pretending its anything but that? They aren’t presenting an honest argument so why even pretend they are?
Well put. No one seems to ask the question of how all us middle aged people, who were apparently bombarded with mis and disinformation in the years prior to the internet still have functioning brains.
I was told that Freddie Star had eaten a hamster yet I, and many others, didn’t need a middle class public school educated ‘intellectual’ such as Marianna Spring to allow us to disseminate such information.
The arrogance of these people is simply breathtaking, that they alone are so intellectually superior to everyone else that only they can decide what you and I can and cannot see.
I had a small interaction with this woman on twitter who airily dismissed my question as to why, as a Paramedic, I’d not seen a single serious Covid case. She wasn’t curious but simply explained to me that my observations were incorrect because the doctors HAD seen lots of these patients and as Doctors are far more trustworthy than Paramedics I was simply wrong!
I don’t think it is arrogance. They are just paid gatekeepers used to try to control the public discourse so as to support undemocratic narratives.
Misinformation and disinformation are just two of the most recent words to be subjected to ludicrous redefinition by government, institutions and authoritarians.
It has been done to corrupt the true meaning of the words in order to provide the so called elites an opportunity to weaponise language and bolster their cynical psychological projection onto others.
What it appears to mean is a comfortable little box that people draw around themselves, and within which they can unquestioningly for or against something, without anyone forcing them to think about its consequences or alternatives.
Excellent.
Questions are raised given the sheer amount that we have been able to discover in recent years and the concommitant understanding of how much is hidden. The main focus should be, where is a person now. That system is well and truly dead and not just dead but targeted for destruction. If you want to put as much distance as possible between them and you then you need to align yourself with the forces of goodness and beauty and truth. The bickering over the past leave it to them. Let the dead bury the dead.
Stupid cow.
Frome here on in who knows but it certainly isn;t the BBC. We are talking about months not years left of our culture. I hope you are savouring the last if it because if you have clear vision you can see exactly where it is going. I think the nasty English weather will help us with endurance.
I think everything that is happening is part of a grand project that involves the destruction of European Christian civilisation and the eradication of Europeans.
I was born in 61 and it seems to me it was happening fairly slowly, in second gear, (although decimalisation and metrication were acts of gross local cultural vandalism) until 97, when they went up a couple of gears.
After the election in 2019 they went up another couple of gears.
(I’m not aware of any cars with 7 gears,so my analogy will fail with the election of Labour next time!)
Certainly the destruction of the west is foremost for them. And to be honest they have largely achieved it by surrepititious means. The have moved very far forward since 1945. It is our job to tell them here and no further. We are here to restore a basic simple understanding and we will brook no quarter.
The very use of the terms misinformation and disinformation are offensive in themselves. This is simply pandering to the Orwellian language which is being foisted on us. In reality a twisted way of encouraging people to view the world through the vocabulary of the oppressors. I’m having none of it.
Misinformation is a mix up and disinformation is telling lies. End of.
The issue is the lateness of the hour. We aren’t just naive young bucks learning for the first time that things aren’;t as they seem.We are deeply involved in a war and all of our names are on the missiles.I would just ask for a bit more circumspection because in miltary terms we cannot win and to pretend otherwise is just stupid.
I can’t make anyone feel happier but as long as we gel with our intentions then we’re good to go.I genuinely want to keep this country and this culture alive no matter what.We try our best and see what happens.
All you need to remember is that when your country starts using depleted uranium then all optipns are on the table. Don;t imagine that because you’re an island that you will be safe forever from retaliation.Depleted uranium causes major environmental damage and severe birth defects in civilian populations and civilian injuries generally. This was all listed in a 1990s UN report. This is a very serious matter and you won’t be able to brush it under the carpet for long.
Of course the BBC should not have a misinformation correspondent. It is like they employ their own fact checker. The BBC as arbiters of truth, don’t make me laugh. Pure hubris and an insult to our intelligence.
Check out funding for BBC Media Action…including funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
We need to unplug from the BBC forever
*****
Stand in the Park Make friends & keep sane
Sundays 10.30am to 11.30am
Elms Field
near Everyman Cinema & play area
Wokingham RG40 2FE
Ditched my BEEB license, 3 years ago and loving it. Have you heard and the latest corruption of Great Expectations with a black Estella. Renamed ” Great Exploitation “. I kid you not. Remind us about the Anne Boleyn fiasco
There is “truth” and there is “Official Truth”.—– There is “Science” and there is “Official Science”. ——-If someone says there is no such thing as an elephant then that would clearly be misinformation as most of us have seen elephants, even if only on TV. ———————–But NO ONE has seen “Climate Change”. You cannot look out of your living room window and say “Oh look at all the climate change”. ——–An individual might think they have seen it. They might feel a hot day and assume that is climate change. They may see a heavy downpour and think that must be climate change. They might hear about some ice melting and assume yep, that is climate change. ———–But those are all assumptions. But when officialdom tells you that those assumptions represent “Truth” then that is misinformation. They are “Official Truth”. ——————Climate Change is therefore “Official Science” in support of Public Policy.