Too Heavy (of EV) and Fire: Irony of massive windmills as a burnt out car carrier loaded with 4000 cars, including 498 EVs, is stark.
Too Heavy (of EV) and Fire: Irony of massive windmills as a burnt out car carrier loaded with 4000 cars, including 498 EVs, is stark.
Eemshaven Netherlands 8.54pm / Newark 2.54pm
There will need to be a re-think about the safe shipping of EVs. Earlier July, another vehicle ship caught fire at the Port of Newark, killing two firefighters. Another ship burned and sank in March 2022. The Felicity Ace sank about 400 kilometers (250 miles) off Portugal’s Azores Islands as it was being towed after a salvage team had put out the fire.
Case about Fremantle is not alone.
The cause of the blaze on the Fremantle Highway is still unknown, according to the Dutch coast guard, which previously said the initial cargo list they received suggested just 25 EVs were on the ship. The fact: 498 EV’s.
Whether EVs had anything to do with precipitating the fire, the number on board is relevant to what’s likely to be a days-long effort to extinguish it. Lithium-ion battery fires burn hotter and last longer than gasoline. They can also be difficult to put out, sometimes reigniting hours or days later.
Electric vehicles are significantly heavier than gasoline-powered cars, given the weight of the batteries necessary to power them. Earlier this year in the US, the head of the National Transportation Safety Board said there are many safety concerns when electric cars collide with lighter ones.
Over the years, electric cars have become increasingly popular due to energy efficiency and the promise of a more environment-friendly form of transportation. Drivers of these vehicles still face challenges, however, including driving range and the amount of time it takes to recharge the car's battery.
When Elon says Tesla is the only automaker that could sell cars for zero margin today and makeup for it in autonomy earnings later, here's why that matters. Autonomous mobility platform operators will be a Goliath in the future auto value chain, worth much more than OEMs alone. Tesla is aiming to have a Cybertruck (around 12k pounds weight) delivery event in Q3. Riskier for a lot parking structure.
Shipping companies have urged international maritime regulators to create safety rules for transporting electric vehicles after a spate of fires aboard freighters carrying EVs, including one last week near the Netherlands that killed a crew member and injured seven others.
In the latest accident, the 650-foot Fremantle Highway caught fire July 26 en route from Bremerhaven, Germany, to Singapore with 3,783 vehicles aboard, including 498 EVs. It took until Sunday for the fire and smoke to subside sufficiently for tugboats to pull the freighter out of shipping lanes. Authorities do not know how the fire started, but shipping operators “are calling for acceleration [of new regulations] after this new incident,” Nathan Habers, spokesperson for the Royal Association of Netherlands Shipowners, told me in a message.
The temperature on board the Fremantle Highway dropped significantly on Friday and the smoke also dissipated, allowing a salvage company crew to board the boat and establish a more robust connection with their vessels, the coast guard said in a live blog update.
While the crew returned to salvage vessels, the connection will make it easier to keep the ship under control, the coast guard said. Efforts to extinguish the fire have been complicated by crews having to avoid putting too much water on board and causing stability problems.
The ship is carrying a total of 3,783 vehicles, including 498 electric cars, according to its charterer Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha Ltd. There are several hundred BMW AG cars on board, plus roughly 300 Mercedes-Benz Group AG vehicles, representatives for the companies have said.
Spokespeople for Volkswagen AG haven’t ruled out that the automaker has cars on the carrier.
The Panama-flagged Fremantle Highway was en route to Port Said, Egypt, after a recent stop in the German port of Bremerhaven, according to ship-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg. Shoei Kisen Kaisha Ltd., the Japanese firm that owns the vessel, said the final destination for the carrier was Singapore. The company also owned the Ever Given, the huge container ship that got stuck in the Suez Canal in March 2021.
As the ship had sailed, the car decks should have been sealed and the ventilation system secure in the deck. The fire detection system should have detected any smoke & heat. In which case the crew would have either attempted to fight the fire themselves or use the CO2 system. If EVs, it does not matter as they burn so hot they are almost impossible to extinguish.
The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board has warned about the possible dangers of electric vehicle battery fires, The hazard stems from thermal runaway, a chemical reaction that causes uncontrolled battery temperature and pressure increases.
German Environment Minister Steffi Lemke said she couldn’t rule out the possibility of the burning ship sinking.
“A totally normal car transport by sea could turn into an environmental catastrophe of unknown proportions,” Lemke said in a statement. “This fills me with deep concern.”
She said that if the ship sinks, “large quantities of fuel and other environmentally harmful pollutants from the cargo ship’s load could contaminate the sensitive ecosystem of the North Sea extensively. The unique Wadden Sea National Park is in serious danger. That must be prevented with all our resources.”
The burning vessel had been drifting west toward the island of Terschelling and slowly heading away from Borkum, the westernmost of the German East Frisian islands. Germany sent a ship that doused the sides of the Fremantle Highway with water on Wednesday to keep it as cool as possible.
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