Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Devils Tower – What made the Felicity Ace cargo so flammable? “It was not clear whether the [EV] batteries first sparked the fire”.
Felicity Ace Car Carrier Continues to Burn in Mid-Atlantic – Photos
Reuters February 18, 2022
A salvage team from SMIT is en route to the retreive the abandoned M/V Felicity Ace, which continues to burn near the Azores.
BERLIN/LISBON, Feb 18 (Reuters) – A ship carrying around 4,000 vehicles, including Porsches, Audis and Bentleys, that caught fire near the coast of the Azores will be towed to another European country or the Bahamas, the captain of the nearest port told Reuters on Friday.
Lithium-ion batteries in the electric cars on board the vehicle carrier Felicity Ace have caught fire and the blaze requires specialist equipment to extinguish, captain Joao Mendes Cabecas of the port of Hortas said.
It was not clear whether the batteries first sparked the fire.
“The ship is burning from one end to the other… everything is on fire about five meters above the water line,” Cabecas said.
…
Read more: https://gcaptain.com/felicity-ace-car-carrier-continues-to-burn-in-mid-atlantic/
We may never know if an EV started the fire, but even if the EVs didn’t start the fire, they are certainly making it a lot more difficult to extinguish the fire. EV battery fires are chemically comparable to thermite fires, hot enough to melt steel, so there may not be much left to analyse by the time the ship fire finally burns itself out.
This disaster could have real consequences for the EV market, both transporting EVs by sea or land, and consumer desire for a product which is potentially such a severe fire hazard. I would not be surprised if in the future, once insurers understand the hazard, owning an EV could make your home uninsurable, unless you can prove it is parked well away from your house.
At the very least insurers may start demanding strict end of use dates on the batteries. The hazard likely grows as the battery ages, though if the Felicity Ace fire was started by a new battery, you can never say the hazard is zero.
The following video demonstrates how ferocious EV fires can be in a home environment – and this fire is just an electric scooter. Automobile batteries are far larger. How much would be left of your house, how much time would you have to get to safety, if an electric automobile caught fire in a built in garage or car port? EV fires are not constrained by lack of oxygen. The battery itself contains everything necessary to initiate and sustain a deadly, white hot fire which is almost impossible to extinguish.
A fair number of apartment buildings have garages in their lower floors. Imagine a burning Tesla.
There were a lot of VW EVs IE.4 on board. It is VW main port.
All decks above water were on fire end to end. White smoke gives it away.
1/2 billion total loss
I seem to recall a U.S. commercial airline crashing several years ago, the culprit was attributed to some batteries in the cargo.
I have not determined the sea conditions at the time of the incident, but inasmuch as it was winter and North Atlantic it probably delivered higher loads than normal to the ship and the cars. I don’t know how the vehicles were secured to the deck, but hope it was better than the average BC ferry, which is none unless you are on the end of the vehicle lane where you will get one block on your tire. If the fire originated in the cars, then it is not clear to me if the ignition related to cars being tossed about and causing a gasoline leak, a spark and catastrophic ignition, or a battery fire.
If lithium can melt steel then it could destroy concrete as well, that would be catastrophic for a car burning in an underground car park.
It doesn’t matter if an actual EV causes a fire on ro-ro car car carriers. It’s just sufficient that one of the EV batteries has a runaway event among a number of them and it’s been well recognized prior to the Felicity Ace-
Electric Vehicles and Maritime Transportation – Fire Hazards Identified (gcaptain.com)
Conventional water sprinkler systems to suppress general onboard fires are inadequate against lithium battery runaway and given the water damage that can occur they prefer water fogging systems- HI-FOG Water Mist Fire Protection for Ships – Ro-Ro Decks – YouTube
The same reservation would occur with a fire retardant foam system and again not applicable to these batteries as is CO2 fire suppression which is a cleaner option-
What is a CO2 Fire Suppression System and How Does It Work? (koorsen.com)
As you can see these systems can work with an ICE fire but not with runaway lithium batteries and their contagion WHATEVER their initial cause. That’s what the crew of the Felicity Ace recognized once an EV runaway event occurred. The ship was effectively doomed by its very open deck design and all the flammables onboard so they rightly abandoned ship.
That’s why this loss has huge ramifications for sea transport of EVs as well as ferry cars and passengers who will now be alerted globally to the risk as will insurers and Govt Regulators not to mention the car carrier investors. As one scribe mentioned elsewhere a Chernobyl event for EVs.
I trust that governments worldwide will now stop EV from being transported on passenger and vehicle ferries.
Experts noted even if the batteries had not caused the fire, that they are highly explosive and likely contributed to the spread of the fire on the vessel.
Photos: Fire-Ravaged Felicity Ace Adrift off the Azores (maritime-executive.com)
The crew were the first on the scene to recognize the ship was doomed by her cargo. Now she’s listing and likely going to the bottom unless they can tow it shelter before any bad weather. Scrap value in any case.
Quote:”The hazard likely grows as the battery ages,
I’ll never find the link but as I understand Lithium Batteries (Li-Ion batteries as opposed to LiFePO4 batteries) – the most hazardous part of its life-cycle is the first week.
It is then that any manufacturing faults show up – via the ‘mere’ fact that they spontaneously combust
Thus and my understanding was that a major part of the manufacturing process was to ‘let them sit’ – closely monitored and somewhere safe & out-of-the-way for at least 7 days after they’ve come off the production line. Let them ‘soak’ for a while ##
Is that what happened? Unsoaked batteries were built into a/some cars because of shipping shortages, chip shortages, trucker shortages and deadlines deadlines deadlines.
More haste = less speed and all that jazz
## That was A Theory about Flight MH370 – that some ‘unsoaked’ Lithiums were in the hold and especially were loaded first into cargo.
Then they’d have been directly under where the plane’s main computer was – the burning batteries took down the computer.
That being the one place on the plane that did not have a fire suppression system for fear of a false alarm flooding the computer and crashing the plane
A bit like why our brains don’t have pain sensors – if something is chewing up your brain you’re pretty well terminal so pain sensors up there are irrelevant.
Hence and why the hapless crate flew as far as it did but totally incommunicado and entirely out of control.
Bit like Alzheimer’s disease in fact = everything still works – apart from the brain.
MOL car carrier on fire, abandoned, Atlantic UPDATE Feb 19 | FELICITY ACE – FleetMon Maritime News
Internal combustion engines rule. They are safe, clean and affordable.
I suspect a lot of EV owners are now parking their battery powered run abouts a little further away from the house, after seeing this latest “unknown” cause of fire among EV powered cars parked close to each other in a confined space.
When a ship or building are lost due to an EV fire, does this count as a carbon emission? How much carbon does it take to replace that ship and all of those cars?
Noteworthy, Reuters clearly and specifically mention lithium ion batteries via quote from captain.
BBC also report story but omit any mention of lithium ion batteries or electric vehicles.
Lying by omission?
Imagine if that was a crude carrier on fire. Would the BBC have it as the headline on the 6 O’clock news along with Harrabin banging on about pollution and climate change?
I assume they ship the vehicles with virtually empty batteries? Like they ship combustion engine vehicles with empty gas tanks? Problem if EV are on board, cutting oxigen will not stop the fire. And that takes us tot the question, should the ship be salvaged or, after tapping the fuel, dbe sunk in a sport where i does little harm?
Interesting, we’ve just had a fire on a ferry close to here, wonder if electric vehicles had anything to do with that.
Greece: Search continues for 12 missing in ferry fire (msn.com)
Insurance is all about the odds. And for EV fires the odds are incredibly low so I doubt premiums will even be different.
My theory is: Russia did it, because Germany is politically stalling Nord Stream2
As I expected- the Boston Globe’s article on the boat fire failed to even mention that the fire might have started in an EV battery. The article mentions that many of the cars are high end- but no mention that many are EVs.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/02/18/metro/heres-latest-ri-bound-cargo-ship-that-caught-fire-sea-with-thousands-new-cars-aboard/#comment-132271236
I can see home-owners insurance companies requiring that EVs be parked outside or in a garage not connected to the house. For now, anyway.
Gasoline is dangerous but so far does not self-ignite.
This is a developing story.
We’ve had hybrid cars for some time now. Do those batteries the same chemistry as EVs?
Fair comment, and for sure the problem must be fixed: but statistically petrol vehicles have a higher chance of fire. Imagine the fuss if someone proposed introducing petrol powered vehicles into an eco-system of EVS
Apparently electric cars fires are not at all uncommon on freighters.
“Now, after what it describes as the “umpteenth case” of a fire breaking out in vehicles transported by cargo vessels, Grimaldi has called for tighter regulations on what can be transported at sea.”
https://theloadstar.com/latest-containership-fire-leads-grimaldi-to-demand-tighter-regs-on-ocean-cargo/
Who would like a Powerwall or two or three installed in their house?
If this keeps happening, I wonder how long until the batteries are send separately.