This is what you originally said.
I’ve never seen a plastic fuel tank leak.
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Luton airport...
- Thread starter Uther
- Start date
I’ve never seen a plastic fuel tank leak.
Soldato
Really. It’s been the cause of all the major car park fires recently.
Soldato
Exactly. It's the plastic tank and diesel fuel that means the fire spreads much easier.
There's a huge difference between an isolated car fire, and an entire car park burning to the ground.
Soldato
Just to point out that whilst the flashpoint of diesel is high, far higher than that of petrol (circa 52c vs -43c for petrol). You can easily ignite it with a flame/spark if it’s heated up first.
Got any proof?
Soldato
Oh, sorry I didn't realise. You've never seen one - so it doesn't happen.
In the real world, it'll be something else on the car starting the fire. Once the fires going, that tank is going to melt and the diesel is going to burn.
Suspended
The issue with diesel in atmosphere is the flash point (the vapour is what burns)
petrol is -43C
diesel is >52C
Its very hard to set fire to diesel at normal temps, but very easy if there is a heat source near by. Once its alight of course its self heating in effect
FWIW we have a site fire crew (top tier comah site) and they say diesel fires are worse than petrol, but that OFC petrol is far more likely to combust in the first place.
The odd thing about petrol is that without an ignition source the autoignite temperature is higher than diesel.
petrol is -43C
diesel is >52C
Its very hard to set fire to diesel at normal temps, but very easy if there is a heat source near by. Once its alight of course its self heating in effect
FWIW we have a site fire crew (top tier comah site) and they say diesel fires are worse than petrol, but that OFC petrol is far more likely to combust in the first place.
The odd thing about petrol is that without an ignition source the autoignite temperature is higher than diesel.
Permabanned
Those "Vehicles are parked here entirely at owner's risk" signs never seemed better value 
Soldato
I literally just linked to one.
I'm not saying you're wrong - but I wouldn't trust that data as far as I could throw it.
Vehicle fire data suggests higher incident rate for EVs
Production process problems have been blamed for recalls by Ford and BMW affecting more than 46,000 cars, including almost 5,000 in the UK.www.fleetnews.co.uk
Over to you
Edit* Yeah that's from 2020, but still.
The fire data was also from 2019, whereas the article is from the end of 2020 and there's not date on the data for number of vehicles.
It's got data from the fire brigade about EV fires - what constitutes an EV? Pure electric, hybrid, plugin hybrid?
It then compares that data to anything that's a plugin - including PHEVs. So non plugin hybrids are excluded.
If it's taking just pure electric cars for the number of fires, and includes PHEVs for it's total pool of cars, then the % number might be too low.
If it's taking anything with an 'EV' battery as an EV, and then only comparing it to vehicles that can plug in, the % number might be too high.
That ignores the fact that anything that's a hybrid is it's own thing - you can't blame it on being an EV if it's the ICE part of the car that going up, or vice versa. And if it's something to do with the combination of both techs that's doing it, it shouldn't be compared to either as the issues may well be unique to hybrids.
Then the last part of the article about the fleet manager having 'first hand experience' of an EV fire. The car suffered an 'electrical fire' while at some employees home because the plug socket and charging unit had melted, but the car wasn't a raging inferno as the user managed to check the dash. I'm not sure if there's a recognised term for "Electrical Fire" which includes overheating and melting cables - I would have expected a fire to have some actual fire in it. Same as them saying "first hand experience" when it wasn't experienced by her first hand.
Suspended
Almost certainly
The issue will be the expansion in a small area will cause contortion compared to the area around.
Permabanned
I had a drum of contaminated aviation JET-A1 fuel here once I used for washing parts off. Someone saw the drum and was alarmed there was no lid on it and what a fire risk it was. I pumped about half a pint into a dog's feeding dish and challenged her to light it with a box of matches. She declined, but looked terrified when i demonstrated how stable it was with about a dozen matches, (until it's aerosolised...)?
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It’s not that the fuel tank sprang a leak and caused a diesel fire. It’s that diesel ignited (most likely in the engine bay) then spread to the rest of the car. The plastic fuel tank melted in the intense heat causing more fuel (diesel) to leak, ignite, flow and spread to the next vehicle. This causes a chain reaction.
My question would be is a metal fuel tank going to prevent this spread?
Don’t forget at the point you have hundreds of burning cars the heat is coming from multiple sources and not just the fuel. That kind of heat will weaken metal beams causing a structural failure.
Soldato
A metal tank wont melt as easily, so it should slow the spread of the fire.
Your link doesn't say that diesel is causing more fires though, which is what I asked.
Yes I know what, but that’s not what he implied in his original post.
He implied that crappy old diesel cars with plastic fuel tanks leak fuel.
They don’t.