Last week, a massive cargo ship carrying expensive automobiles, including multiple Porsches, caught fire, forcing the 22-member crew to flee to the Atlantic ocean.
And, as it turns out, a “significant percentage” of the vehicles are electric, complicating firefighting operations significantly. Though it is unknown if their lithium-ion batteries were to blame for the incident.
The large cargo ship, called the Felicity Ace, was delivering over 4,000 automobiles from Germany to the United States, including 1,100 Porsches and 189 Bentleys. The Volkswagen Group, Porsche’s parent business, develops electric premium vehicles such as the Porsche Taycan, the Audi e-tron, and VW’s ID.4.
However, the cargo ship has been floating and on fire off the coast of the Azores islands in the Atlantic since the crew abandoned ship. Ocean-ready tug boats are already in route to the Felicity Ace in order to tow the vessel to land – after the raging flame has been quenched safely.
The automobiles on cargo ship are electric, and a portion of the fire is caused by batteries that are still burning, although at a reduced intensity. The report – yet another setback for the already struggling automobile industry — demonstrates that carrying enormous, extremely flammable batteries has certain inherent hazards, a timely issue considering the EV’s exponential growth.
Reference- Wall Street Journal, Futurism, Inside EVs, Wikipedia