Credibility problems.

Another report of an ‘exploding electrofag’ in the news. Seems the antis can’t find anything even remotely real to whine about in the e-liquid or vapour so they are going for the batteries. The liquid will not burn and the batteries cannot explode in use unless deliberately short-circuited. All the explosion stories are about rechargeable lithium batteries. Some might be true, there have been rare cases of phones and laptops doing the same thing – but it’s not the phone or laptop, it’s the battery. There are so very many of these batteries produced that the occasional duff one is pretty much a certainty.

Okay, let’s look at the story closely. The guy claims to have been vaping for four months and this is the third one he’s blown up. This one, the third one, he left charging overnight in his car. Does that seem like the action of a rational mind? Some comments –

One: If two similar items blew up in four months, I would not charge the third one while asleep because I’m not an idiot.

Two: Why charge it using the car battery? Also, is this even possible? Do car cigar-lighter sockets work when the ignition is off? The one in my Mk II Cortina did in the early eighties but that’s because I fitted it and wired it in with pliers and Scotchlok connectors. It was in a rough centre console I made along with a radio, a battery voltage indicator and an oil pressure gauge – the voltage indicator and fag-lighter were wired direct to the battery. You can just see a corner of the centre console in this old photo –

Dashboards were simple affairs in those days. I can’t remember what the two switches did. Lights, I think. Later I replaced the bus-sized steering wheel with a much smaller one. I should have kept that car, it would be road-tax exempt now.

Cars I had later with the socket already fitted only worked with the ignition on. If he is daft enough to use his car as a charging station then he is probably daft enough to leave the engine running.

Three: Four to six hours is usually enough. Overnight charging using a mains charger that can cut out when the battery is full is probably okay but a simple car-socket connector isn’t likely to do that. Nobody expects anyone to leave anything charging in the car unattended so the car – charger is a simple device.

Four: If these lithium batteries are so deadly, why are people buying electric cars that mean they are sitting on enough explosive power to send their arse into orbit? And why are they charging them overnight?

Five: They are used by more than 3.5m Americans and 1.5m people in the UK. All of whom have more than one battery. How many are claimed to have exploded now? Usually due to the user having no common sense when handling lithium batteries and nothing at all to do with the use of an Electrofag. It looks to me like the batteries are showing about a one-in-a-million failure rate and most – if not all – cases are because of using the wrong charger, leaving it on uncontrolled charge for too long or meddling with the device.

And finally, the giveaway line:

‘God knows what would have happened then, or if it had gone off when we were driving and I’ve got children inside the car.’

Theenk of the Cheeldren – I suggest that this story is an antivaper fake. As are most of the ‘me too’ comments. What would you do if one of your batteries exploded on charge and burned your car? The first thing most people would do is lodge a complaint with the seller.

A spokesman for Vapouriz, which offers advice on charging the devices on its website, said: ‘Chris Thomas has not contacted us with regards to any complaint, and actually purchased ‘e-liquid’, which in its diluted form is not flammable, from us only four days ago.

Does anyone suspect that maybe there was no battery charging in that car and maybe something else caused a fire and maybe it’s convenient to claim the battery did it? I’m not saying this is the case, but there are so many absurdities in this tale that it can’t be true as reported. Even accounting for the Mail’s notorious twisting of facts and spinning their own agenda, the idea that someone would charge a battery using their car battery instead of the mains is, in itself, utterly bizarre.

I know Maesycwmmer. Used to pass through often when travelling between the side I lived on (Pontllanfraith) and the places many of my mates lived (Ystrad Mynach, Hengoed and Fleur-de-Lys). I went that way to go through the old railway tunnel – now closed off permanently but not filled in so if you have one of the houses built on top, tread softly. The time I lived in Cefn Fforest did not lend itself to going that way, it was much too far in the wrong direction.

So I have a link to the area and the people (I’m related to lots of them) and even with that link, I still don’t believe this story is real.

I call bovine rear extrusions on this one.