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.
Please excuse my ignorance, but are batteries for in home electrical storage such as Tesla Walls similar to EV batteries? Are they just as vulnerable to fire as EVs are? Are houses with Tesla Walls insurable? If such storage should not be placed in an attached garage, how far away from the main house must the battery storage shed be placed?
Same deal as Tesla cars and plenty of videos around on them-
Tesla Powerwall Teardown – Taking a look inside a new Tesla Powerwall thats been stored for years – YouTube
Tesla Battery Teardown – Model 3 Standard Range Plus – YouTube
Yes they can torch houses like ships-
Warning about maintaining solar panel batteries after Adelaide house badly damaged in fire – ABC News
or lots of busses with them stacked together-
Electric bus bursts into flames, sets nearby vehicles on fire in China – YouTube
or anything else in close proximity to them that burns and firies basically have to wait until the batteries have burned themselves out. The problem gets bigger the more of them you stack together once a battery runaway begins.
The cells are identical. They are made in Tesla’s Nevada Gigafactory.
Thank you.
People should be cautious even with hand tool batteries. Store and charge them where if they catch fire they don’t cause secondary fires. Ditto gasoline cans and propane tanks.
The ignition source of the 2019 fire on the dive boat MV Conception was never positively established by the Coast Guard inquiry, but it likely started on the salon in an area where passengers left their camera and dive light batteries charging overnight. Fire there blocked access to the stairway to the upper deck. All 33 passengers and one crew member sleeping below died.
It really makes no difference, practically speaking, when a dense concentration of motor vehicles – whether powered by gasoline, diesel, or battery – ignites.
We had a situation here in SW Florida where I live a couple years ago, there was a huge densely packed parking area near SW Florida International Airport, where rental cars were densely packed, much like they are in typical vehicle transport ships. The fire must have started somewhere in the middle of the dense pack, because by the time firefighters from all over the area came to respond, it was too late – more than 5,000 cars, mostly gasoline fueled, burned up, and all the firefighters could do was make a fire break around the conflagration to keep it from spreading offsite.
Much here at WUWT rails on and on about EV battery fires … but anyone who has ever witnessed a gasoline fueled motor vehicle on fire on the highway, or off, knows that those fires cannot be put out either, once underway. The fire may not burn as long, but the end result is the same – a charred hulk of a vehicle, and possibly dead human occupants.
After all as the EV haters readily acknowledge, the chemical energy content of gasoline or diesel is far more dense than that of any existing chemical battery.
It’s the energy content, stupid! As political consultants might say.
It is not the energy content per se, Duane. It is the inability to extinguish the fire even if just one EV short circuits and burns. The other issue literally, is the toxic gasses produced for the hours/days the EV fire takes to burn itself out. I would welcome an electrical drive vehicle and as soon as a major car company produces a fuel cell to power the motors in each wheel that can be recharged with methane I will happily buy one.
It’s only the energy content if you include the oxidizer.There is zero combustion energy in gasoline if you deny the oxygen, as in the petrol tank in a typical car (there’s very little air in the gas tank; it’s mostly a non-combustable mixture of gasoline fumes) You have to burst the tank or make it leak to get a fire, and then only if there is an ignition source.
Car manufacturers learned a few decades ago that gas tank placement should be protected in a collision and not under the rear (trunk, boot). Lower liklihood of having a Pinto scenario.
Also, if you have an under hood fire in an ICE car, you shut off the engine with your key and the fuel pump stops feeding fuel to the fire. That’s one reason why car manufacturers put the fuel pump inside the gas tank, as any downstream fuel line failure is shut off. (Resistance to vapor lock was the primary reason)
Newer cars that don’t have a key? I guess the software removes power to the fuel pump – somehow – sometime. Personally, I don’t like the idea of relinquishing direct control over the engine start/stop, and this is one of the reasons.
I don’t like the idea of relinquishing direct control over the engine start/stop,
Same!
ICE cars are only shipped with enough fuel to drive them onto the ship and off again.
Most firefighters come with equipment for putting out gasoline fires and usually do within a minute or two of arriving on the scene.
I love how you assume that anyone who points out some of the many problems with EV’s is now listed a a EV hater? Do you often use inaccurate insults in an effort to shut down debate?
He’s a leftist, so of course he does.
If so it’ll be virtually impossible to extinguish.
Somehow I don’t think that they ran into the kitchen to dig out some towels and wet them in the sink to put over their mouths…
While not intending to dismiss battery fires as inconsequential, I think the risks may be overstated by posters on this forum. I’m not saying the stats in the link are the last word, or even accurate. I’m just saying that people should look to the data, which is what people here expect and demand from the climate alarmists. Let’s not approach things the way they do. Do Electric Cars Catch Fire More Than Gas-Powered Vehicles? – Larson Law Firm P.C. (ndakotalaw.com)
The article you linked says they are much harder to put out – I think that is the main issue. Regarding the boat fire, they may have been able to put it out if it had started in a gas powered car, or maybe not. If something happens fairly often, but is fairly easy to remedy, that’s different from something that happens less commonly but is far more catastrophic.
An analogy – minor earthquakes are quite common, but it is the rarer big ones that do most of the damage.
(Given several other comments on this thread…🙄)
This bears repeating, with emphasis:
THEY ARE
much harderIMPOSSIBLE TO EXTINGUISH.🙂
General Motors sent a letter to all 140,000 Chevy Bolt BEV car owners, asking them to park 50 ft from other cars. Has any manufacturer ever said this about any ICE car?
https://www.theday.com/article/20210916/BIZ07/210919553
Mr..1: Thank you for (once again) expressing your concern for posters on this forum. From the first, the concern of posters here has been the catastrophic result of an EV fire, which is not overstated at all. We also notice that the more EVs (on roads and at sea!), more fires. I don’t see anybody counting more EV fires than ICE fires, maybe you could direct your tender concern toward an identified “poster” on the forum.
Any concern for the ship? If USA didn’t encourage EVs, that ship would have none on board. The crew could stay on board, put out the fire, and even reach destination if not for battery fire (regardless of how it started, right?).
The “numbers” you insist we see are not material to the point made by the overwhelming majority of posters at this forum. There is absolutely no cause to gaslight posters here by suggesting we are “approaching” things like climate alarmists. You are the one using immaterial number-of-fires data to obscure the point, that the EV fires are catastrophic. Just like CliScis.
If we are imagining possible nasty things, how about someone hacking into the (for example) Tesla remote programming system and “adjusting” settings such that every one of them simultaneously had a battery fire?
How? I don’t think that would be possible. It would be like hacking a phone to try to get the battery to explode – it just doesn’t quite work that way.
Philip must have watched one too many tv shows where people (for example Captain Kirk) cause computers to blow up/meltdown by catching them in a logic contradiction. Doesn’t happen in the real world.
Lithium fire burns at around 2,000 degree C, while iron melts at 1,500C, and steel loses most of its tensile strength, turning into glowing white colour.
Additional issue on a ship is you can’t just pump thousands of gallons of water into the ship to put it out. Otherwise it will become a submarine. That would probably put tbe fire out for good mind🙂
Thankfully one of those EVs didn’t end up in a parking deck in lower Manhattan.
Is this danger applicable to the hybrids?
See earlier reply upthread. Much less so.
Only, IIRC, if they use nickel cadmium batteries. Many (most?) of the newer models now use lithium-ion batteries.
Diesel is the safest – the fuel doesn’t burn easily
Once you delve into the demise of the Felicity Ace and what we already know about lithium battery fires you realize it’s a modern day Titanic moment and something the ship’s 22 crew members now fully comprehend. Why is it so?
Well put yourself in the ship’s Master’s position along with his senior officers. They’re sitting on a 300M by 30M wide floating multi-level carpark and each car needs around a 6Mx3M space to be lashed down. You know 8 or 9 cars across and end to end for that 300M on a number of decks. Unlike your local land based car park they don’t need traffic lanes around them all as they park them in one after the other and it will be last on first off all at once and not at various times at our convenience as parking owners.
Now the Master and officers know the ship’s manifest includes say 20 or 25% EVs amongst ICEs stacked together like that and an alarm goes off that there’s a fire onboard amongst them all. Now up on the bridge they’ll have access to fire and smoke sensors and complete camera vision of their cargo. Once they realize an EV lithium battery is now immolating and spreading to the 4 or 5th lithium battery and no amount of sprinkler water/water fogging/foam/ CO2 fire suppression can stop it they know the ship is doomed to become a pile of melted plastic and metal at the bottom of the ocean.
So it’s abandon ship and take to the lifeboats (in the middle of the night I understand) safe in the knowledge the lesson of the Titanic will see them right. Of course modern global communications and fossil fuelled helicopters are a comforting thought for them and they are in busy shipping lanes with GPS location at all times as they watch the glow of the ship from a safe distance.
Now do you get what they all got? That wasn’t with a ro-ro full of 100% EVs by whenever the brains trust can manage it but likely only 1 in every 4 or 5 incendiary battery cars. But they knew what we all know about situations like 911 and Grenfell Towers and lithium battery cars and busses going up and firies can only cool their surroundings and wait for the lithium batteries to burn themselves out.
Welcome to their Titanic moment and you don’t think a whole lot of people with a vested interest in battery vehicles for all aren’t going to go into denial about that? I haven’t seen any interviews with any of the ship’s crew yet and are some very strong vested interests signing them up to non-disclosure agreements or what? Do your job media lackeys.
Am I worried about being forced in future to have EVs in my carport and driveway? Not really as I have a double brick wall between us and them and we sleep on the other side of the single storey home with alarms between us and these potential incendiaries. I can still understand this Titanic moment for many however.
Especially when you consider that the exact same thing happened to the sister ship, the ‘Sincerity Ace’ on New Years Eve 2018. The company must have learned that you can’t put the fire out from that example.
Yes they’re not exactly rushing out with a report on the fire cause with the Sincerity Ace or I can’t find mention of it on the net-
Panama to probe cause of Sincerity Ace blaze – Ships & Ports (shipsandports.com.ng)
and others are wondering about that too since the report was apparently submitted on 14 feb 2021 but not available for download at present-
Sincerity-Ace-No-Report.jpg (1282×537) (gcaptain.com)
Curiouser and curiouser with actual fatalities involved and no media interviews yet with any crew of the Felicity Ace? Smells of cover up with the risks.
Still skeptical about a Titanic moment here? Take a tour of a ro-ro car carrier and you’ll see the overhead sprinklers and the occasional fire extinguisher and hose reel particularly at the end climbing the steps-
Roro Ship car ship vessel tour and walk around inside a Glovis roro vessel car supply chain – YouTube
But imagine one day they’re all supposed to be EVs packed in like that including on the ramps between decks and for whatever reason one catches fire like so-
Watch This Severe Electric Car Fire And Explosion At A Charging Station (insideevs.com)
The Felicity Ace might have only had 20 or 25% EVs but once the crew realized you can’t put out lithium batteries they knew the ship was doomed like it was-
Photos show Felicity Ace, the burning cargo ship loaded with luxury cars, smoldering at sea (yahoo.com)
The clear lesson is massed EVs are a serious catastrophic threat to property and life.
Don’t you want to save the planet? Even at this price?
This is an object lesson to us all that sometimes the price is far too high, and not worth paying. You want to save the planet without killing people? Buy a horse.
So….. I just bought a smoke detector with a 10 yr non replaceable lithium battery.
Is it’s battery of a different config/chemistry? Should I take it back?
Call me cruel, but I hope the fire WAS started by a battery pack because if those batteries caught fire while charging in a garage someone could have died. Of course I won’t bet getting a $150,000 Porsche next week. I had ordered three, in different colors, to match the wife’s shoes.
Lucky you, your wife only has 3 different shoes to match. Imagine having to buy matching Porsches for women who have many more than 3 😉
Not a word about EV’s or battery fires at CNN.
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/02/17/tech/ship-fire-luxury-cars/index.html
Ditto for ABC
https://abcnews.go.com/International/abandoned-cargo-ship-carrying-1000-luxury-cars-burning/story?id=82981601
NBC is more honest in their reporting on the situation:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna16675
CNN doesn’t even pretend to be an honest news organization anymore.
James Earl Jones needs to add an incredulous/disdainful inflection to the statement “you’re watching CNN”.
Well it’s not just the large lithium battery EV cargoes that are the problem-
Lithium-ion Batteries From Electric Vehicles Aboard The Felicity Ace Are Keeping The Fire Alive (gcaptain.com)
The rush to save the planet has seen large lithium-ion batteries appear in the very vessels themselves-
Fire and Gas Explosion in Battery Room of Norwegian Ferry Prompts Lithium-Ion Power Warning (gcaptain.com)
But they’ve been ignoring the warnings about large lithium ion battery safety (and the consequences of amassing them together) and churning out such unsafe cheap-jack batteries without the proper safety mechanisms they’ve known about (read the summary)-
Can a lithium-ion battery fire be put out on a vessel? (lithium-news.com)
And apparently these unsafe runaway incendiaries will be mandated in future to sit in the basement of hi-rise apartments multi-level carparks and the like. What is going on here with all these Felicity Aces of the future?
I call Tesla’s and other EVs Portable Carbeques and Super-sized Golf Carts.
Look at the damage to the superstructure.
The vessel sank on March 2.