The Story of a Diesel Car and an Electric Vehicle

The huge fire at Luton Airport in the UK, which destroyed over 1000 cars and compromised the structural stability of the parking garage, in addition to creating chaos, may have important implications.

[Note: several edits have been made since the post was published, and shared via email, so please refer yourself to the latest version below. There are still uncertainties with this unfolding story, so keep that in mind.]

You probably watched the movie An Officer and a Gentleman starring Richard Gere, Debra Winger and others.

The message was clear, you can be both an officer and a gentleman.

The Luton car park fire was clearly intense, and is barely extinguised by now.

You can also check this timeline of the events at this yahoo link.

Estimates is that the carpark fire destroyed well over a thousand vehicles, in addition to compromising the structure of the building.

The discussion on Twitter/X soon evolved to the question whether it was a diesel car or an electric vehicle that caused the fire.

Video footage available on social media provides clues about what happened with the first vehicle that took fire, which then propagated to others, leading to the full blown fire and partial collapse of the building.

There is an inquiry under way, and we will hopefully know all the facts soon, including the exact model and year of the vehicle that first took fire, and what caused the fire. So please read this post with these caveats in mind.

« We don't think it was an electric vehicle » said the Chief Fire Officer of the Bedfordshire Fire and Rescue Service, about the Luton Airport fire. (source)
« At this point, all claims about its diesel-powered propulsion are pending verification. »

What seems now to have occurred is that a Range Rover Sport or a Range Rover Evoque was the first vehicle to catch fire.

The vehicle was not parked, but rather in the middle of an alley in the car park.

Both the Range Rover Sport and the Evoque offer “mild hybrid” models running on diesel.

These mild hybrids use ion-lithium batteries.

This video, with the back of the vehicle from a distance, shows there was an intense torch like fire - not a sudden explosion, which may however have occurred later.

As the vehicle was apparently left in a lane of the car park by the driver, arson is most probably to discard as the cause of the fire.

So, given the nature of the fire, the prime suspect appears to be the ion-lithium battery, or whatever electric malfunction, that brought the battery to catch fire.

[Note that a X user claims he retraced the specific model via the registration plate and that the vehicle is a diesel Land Rover Range Rover Sport registered back in May 2014. This can’t be authenticated, and it may be red herring.]

So, to get back to our movie analogy.

Yes, it was a diesel car, but it probably was also an electric vehicle.

Why is it so important? The UK, Europe, Canada, the US, and some other countries are currently pushing electric vehicles, which mostly rely on lithium based batteries, because without lithium, the batteries are even heavier and cannot be used for vehicles, because of their too low energy density, as explained in this previous article.

The issue of fire of electric vehicles is not new, and there isn’t barely a day when such spontaneous fires occur here and there around the world.

Because they are very intense and essentially impossible to extinguish, they pose a real fire risk, but this risk has so far been ignored by governments.

Acknowledging the fire risk would indeed mean to reconsider many measures that have been taken, including mandates for EVs, and billions and billions of dollars of subsidies pledged, and in some cases already disbursed, for developing an EV industry relying on the ion-lithium batteries.

So the Luton Airport mega-fire is very important, as it will be harder for the authorities to ignore it.

And it will also be harder for insurance companies to ignore it. As we already covered, a major insurance company in the UK has stopped covering EVs and insurance premiums appear to be on a very steep rise, as explained in this Daily Skeptic article.

So, subject to the findings of the inquiry, and getting all the facts, the implications of this fire may be substantial, because the fire risks associated with those vehicles will call for concrete measures to reduce the risk. And reducing risk is very difficult without addressing lithium.

The official version so far has been that it was a diesel vehicle that caused the fire. It’s the version that can be found in mainstream media, and that the fire department officially endorsed. Yet a firefighter also admitted that “lots of electric vehicles were potentially involved quite early on.”

So even if the vehicle where the fire started was not an hybrid or an EV, the rapid propagation, the intensity, the explosions, and the long duration of the fire, may have a lot to do with the presence of EVs in the parking garage.

The whole safety of such parking garages, that are common all around the world, and not only at airports of course, needs to be properly assessed.

There are several issues at stake. First, multi-level parking garages are typically not built to sustain the much heavier weight of EVs compared to ICE vehicles.

Second, vehicles with lithium ion batteries, i.e. EVs and many hybrids, pose a risk for these parking garages, and the presence of charging stations further increases the risk.

Third, there is a near impossibility to extinguish such fires, which could lead to catastrophes, like the Luton Airport one, to happen again and again.

And it’s not only the safety of multi-story parking garages that needs to be assessed. It’s actually any garage, in office buildings, in residential buildings, in homes, etc.

This is very serious.

Fortunately, this time, there were only a few health emergencies associated with smoke inhalation. But it may be much more dangerous a next time, especially with the risk of structural collapse. (I did not check for this quick article the inhalation health risks with these batteries on fire, but they are probably very real too)

In terms of the costs of this fire, over 1000 vehicles plus the demolition and reconstruction of the parking garage will likely be well over 100 million dollars.

What I remember well, from my engineering classes, is that under normal conditions, diesel does not catch fire. This article explains it all.

“The temperature at which diesel begins to vaporize and form a flammable mixture with the air is known as the “flash point.” The flash point of diesel fuel is typically around 52°C, or about 126°F. However, just reaching the flash point doesn’t guarantee that the diesel fuel will ignite. The diesel fuel must be exposed to an ignition source, like a flame or spark, to catch fire at this temperature. For diesel fuel to ignite spontaneously without an external ignition source, it must reach its “autoignition temperature,” which is considerably higher than the flash point. The autoignition temperature of diesel is around 210°C (410°F).”

It may be possible that the diesel tank ended up catching fire and exploding, as some anonymous (reliable?) testimonies on Twitter/X indicate, but if that took place, it was well after the fire started at the battery level.

Mainstream media reports refer to the vehicle that caught fire as a diesel vehicle. The mainstream perspective is actually relayed on the Twitter/X community notes.

The critical thinkers on Twitter/X and elsewhere were prompt to question MSM for not telling the second part of the story.

Yes, it’s a diesel vehicle, but one also with a lithium ion battery.

Once/if the model and the presence of a ion-lithium battery are confirmed, it will be interesting to see if MSM revises its coverage or will continue to kind of mislead/misinform through omission.

It’s hard to believe that the story will go away, without the central issue of safety of such vehicles to be called.

In the meantime, to go back to our analogy with Richard Gere and Debra Winger’s movie, let’s say we may be dealing with ….

a diesel car and an electric vehicle …

or a (not so mild) hybrid, if you prefer calling it that way.

You may also want to check this pretty funny, yet highly informative, video by car commentator Geoff, who introduces it this way:

“In this absolutely 100% serious video we are diving into the murky world of Land Rover Recalls, bad PR, over heating DPF filters, poor maintenance, lithium batteries and big fat Range Rovers. We're also looking in more detail at the ISOLATED Range Rover Evoque fires (that weren't so isolated), learning a bit about how diesel catches fire and taking a look at a number of different Jaguar Land Rover products.”

Suggestions and comments are welcome.

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Here is a follow up to the present article:

See also this executive summary and other articles about EVs on this blog: