‘The crew tried to put out the fire themselves, but failed. Unfortunately one person died and several others were injured.’
The coastguard said the incident happened about 17 miles (14.5 nautical miles) north of the northern island of Ameland. Images taken from shore showed a long plume of grey smoke drifting over the sea from the stricken 650-foot ship.
Cargo ship was sailing from Germany to Egypt when an electric car caught fire
Crew attempted to put the flames out themselves, with at least one being killed
The race is on to prevent the sinking of a cargo ship off the Dutch coast which is carrying almost 3,000 vehicles, including 350 Mercedes-Benz, as it burns out of control with an electric car believed to be behind the deadly fire.
At least one crew member died and others were injured after fire ripped through the Fremantle Highway, a 18,500-ton car-carrying vessel. Rescue helicopters and boats evacuated 23 crew members from the Panamanian-registered ship.
Officials have said there are ‘many’ wounded. Some suffered broken bones, burns and breathing problems and were taken to hospitals in the northern Netherlands, emergency officials said.
Coast guard spokeswoman Lea Versteeg stated:
that the ship is carrying 2,857 cars, of which 25 are electrical.
Also, the ship was also carrying fifteen Lamborghini Aventador LP 780-4 Ultimae supercars, with a rough retail price of more than $500,000 each.
She said this
‘made the fire even more difficult. It’s not easy to keep that kind of fire under control and even in such a vessel it’s not easy.’
Listing previous incidents, the Mail notes:
In 2022, a fire-ravaged US-bound cargo ship that was transporting thousands of supercars including Porsches sunk in the middle of the Atlantic.
The ship was transporting electric and non-electric vehicles, it was reported at the time. Suspicion fell on lithium batteries used in electric vehicles.
Porsche lost 1,117 cars on the ship, Audi claimed a loss of 1,944 vehicles, Bentley lost 189, Lamborghini lost 85, and Volkswagen lost 561 cars.
If this incident can be properly traced to an electric car fire it’s obviously going to cause some rethinking in the shipping of electric vehicles.
There may be some serious insurance issues preventing electric vehicles from being shipped in freighters in the future. It will be a while before this all shakes out.
Perhaps electric car makers will jump on the bandwagon of “source locally”.
According to a press update I’ve seen it didn’t carry 25, but 249 electric cars.
The investigation will be interesting – and I guess EV customers are going to have to accept another price bump as shipping insurance just went up. Probably by a lot.
Only yesterday, I read a very detailed description of how these cars are loaded and why access to any one which catches fire is completely inaccesible to firefighters. That’s the second such massively-expensive fire, and the result MUST be the refusal of shipping companies to carry EVs as cargo. Good riddance, I say, with these things being supported only by technically-ignorant politicians. Those subsidies will never be sufficiently generousto counteract the cost of EV fires!
There have been more – the Felicity Ace sank in 2022 but it’s sister-ship the Sincerity Ace caught fire in the same way in 2018, the ship was salvaged in 2019 but the cargo (3500 Nissan cars) was destroyed. Add to that a number of fires originating in vehicles carried on ro-ro ferries which may or may not have been EV’s.
These were going from Germany to Egypt. There should be a ground (rail or otherwise) between the two. Perhaps a little slower but there of course the trip takes some 53 hours through 12 countries
The ship likely will be a total loss, about $150 to $200 million, and the 4000 vehicle cargo of new German cars, worth at least $250 million, will also be a total loss.
Not to worry, both are insured by the usual insurance companies in London and Zurich.
This could happen in a multi-story garage in Manhattan, etc.
The main problem of shipping the batteries separately is the problem of installing the batteries in the car bodies on arrival. In an electric car, the battery weighs almost as much as the rest of the car.
Not much different from having 4,600 trucks, 140 busses and 7,300 cars (All EV) passing through the tunnel daily (current daily channel tunnel traffic)
Well, so much for an overland route, those ‘stani don’t like to cooperate with themselves let alone other neighbors like India. China too doesn’t have connecting roads with neighbors. But then China makes so many Cheap Crappy EVs, why would they want those made by other outside agencies unless to create more cheap crappy knockoffs
According to “Geoff Buys Cars” the MailOnline headline was changed from 25 electric cars to 350. He has a screenshot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-biwc2NLwtw
Sorry. Ignore this comment. It says “350 Mercedes”. I’ve tried to cancel the comment but have been unsuccesful.
The implications go far beyond the shipping of these vehicles.
If fires like this can start with brand new cars, professionally packed and stowed, then imagine the risks to ordinary car ferries and the like carrying large numbers of EVs in various states of repair. And of course, a cargo vessel carries just a small number of highly trained crew. Passenger ferries carry hundreds of members of the public.
There is a disaster waiting to happen if we continue down the line of having more and more EVs. A fire at sea is always a terrible danger to life, but these EVs can’t be easily extinguished when they go up on dry land when attended to by professional firefighters. The idea of a hold full of them with hundreds of men, women and children on the same ship doesn’t bear thinking about.
Burning freight ship was carrying more electric cars than first reported, shipping company says
K Line says vessel was carrying more EVs than first reported by Coastguard
Initial list said 2,857 cars were on board including 25 EVs, but now revised to 3,783 vehicles, including 498 EVs
Officials now ‘looking at various scenarios to determine the next steps’
The news comes as salvage crews have now boarded the vessel for the first time as heat, flames and smoke have eased.
I’d say they should nuke it from orbit. Only way to be sure.
Nevada_Geo
July 30, 2023 2:19 pm
Two houses have been burned down, in VA and in AZ, from spontaneous battery fires in Chevy Bolts. Some airports including MIA are banning Chevy Bolts in their garages. Thousands of electric cars were recalled due to those fires.
You’ve worked hard and managed to buy a house for your family. Life is good. Do you really want to risk it all by putting an electric car in your garage? When government MANDATES you drive only an electric car (that will happen in 2030 – 2050, no more ICE vehicles) will you feel safe sleeping in your own home?
If this can happen in a car carrying ship it can happen in your garage or the underground multi-level parking garage of a high-rise. Even the best fire protection systems – active and passive – can fail in a fire that lasts days. Is it just a matter of time?
“The New York Fire Department investigated just 30 e-bike fires in 2019. Last year, that number jumped to 220.”
“E-Bike Battery Fires Can Be Deadly. Here’s How to Prevent One in Your Home.To stay safe, don’t mix and match chargers, buy aftermarket batteries or charge in extreme temperatures” By Nicole Nguyen on July 30, 2023 at WSJ.com.
More: “How E-Bike Battery Fires Became a Deadly Crisis in New York CityCity leaders are racing to regulate battery-powered mobility devices, which have been the source of over 100 fires so far this year.” By Winnie Hu on June 21, 2023 at NYTimes.com https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/21/nyregion/e-bike-lithium-battery-fires-nyc.html
In New York, lithium battery fires have killed 13 people so far this year, including four people in a blaze that started in an e-bike store in Chinatown on Tuesday. A total of 23 people have died in battery fires since 2021. This year, there have been 108 fires so far, compared with 98 fires for the same period last year.
The London Fire Brigade has dealt with over 80 E Bike fires so far this year as well as 18 E scooter fires. E scooters were banned from the London Underground last year following three fires in a matter of weeks.
From what I’ve read, while the innovation of home refrigerators was initially widely celebrated, the available refrigerants were rather toxic (the same refrigerants being promoted today to replace the ones currently being used). Entire families were killed in their sleep by refrigerant leaks. Many people started locating their refrigerators in the back yard. The invention of Freon saved the day for refrigeration.
ROTFLOL! But now the governments don’t like “Freon” anymore, and the refrigerator in my basement is charged with HEXANE. Other “refrigerants” are Propane (R-290), Isobutane (R-600a), Butane (R-600), Ethane (R-170), Dimethyl Ether (R-E170), Methane (R-50), Pentane (R-601), and Isopentane (R-601a). Refrigerator explosions are on the rise. “If ya can’t poison ’em, blow ’em up!”
There’s almost as much dimethyl-ether in that wart removal kit in your medicine cabinet as is used in a modern refrigerator….and four times as much butane in that Ronson cigarette lighter refiller by your wife’s hair curler, not to mention 20 times as much in the butane stove stored with your tent in the basement, or propane in your toolbox soldering torch.
I was intrigued by your assertions, so I looked up some actual numbers. I didn’t have time to check them all, but I found that a typical home refrigerator uses about 80 grams of R600a (isobutane) refrigerant. Ronson butane refills range in size from about 45 grams to 175 grams. The refrigerator does use less than I expected, but to say there is “four times as much” in a lighter refill of unspecified size seems to be a bit of an exaggeration.
The problem with Lithium batteries is new. Lead acid are 98% recyclable and if they have a hydrogen explosion seldom is they a fire. Next is nickel Cadmium, no real fire danger their since the materials don’t combust with oxygen being available. It is nice that you do state the Batteries are not a new technology because that the fundamental problem with EV. EV technology is over 140 years old and still have the fundamental problem of energy density in the batteries. Oh by the way even with that solve you have the fundamental problem that high energy dense batteries can discharge all at once. Nothing like having a bomb in the garage.
Non lithium batteries use water as part of the chemical process. This limits the temperature of the cell to boiling. Lithium doesn’t use water and as the result the temperature rase is only limited by the amount of fuel available.
One of the failure modes for lead acid batteries is a plate short but to my knowledge it has never started a fire.
Lead-acid batteries, if they are severely discharged, can release hydrogen gas. The plastic caps over the acid (used for refilling with water) tend to pop off of a typical car battery if hydrogen gas builds up a little pressure. Released hydrogen trapped under a car hood could form a flammable mixture with air in a parked car, but in a moving car, the turbulence of air moving under the engine would likely dilute the hydrogen below the flammability limit.
Fires from lead-acid batteries are possible, but rare, and of limited extent, primarily because the amount of hydrogen that can be produced is limited. A typical lead-acid battery used only to start a gasoline-powered car is generally portable by one person, despite the high density of lead.
In an electric vehicle, a lithium-ion battery has to be able to store enough electrical energy to power the car for about 200 miles, so it is much larger and heavier than a lead-acid battery used only to turn the starter motor for a few seconds. There is a lot more “fuel” available for a lithium-ion battery fire in an electric vehicle than in a lead-acid starter-motor battery.
In an electric vehicle, a lithium-ion battery has to be able to store enough electrical energy to power the car for about 200 miles, so it is much larger and heavier than a lead-acid battery used only to turn the starter motor for a few seconds. There is a lot more “fuel” available for a lithium-ion battery fire in an electric vehicle than in a lead-acid starter-motor battery.
This is all absolutely true,but there is another factor which renders lithium battery fires particularly dangerous and difficult to extinguish, namely that that the oxidant and fuel are present together in the same place, unlike an ordinary fire, which depends on atmospheric oxygen. If you watch a video of a lithium battery cooking off, it’s far more like a huge firework exploding than an ordinary fire.
But the extreme fires caused by lithium batteries are a fairly new thing. The lithium battery “solution” produces a new, essentially impossible to predict or protect against, life threatening danger, even though battery explosions are not a daily event. In parallel, the insanity of climate politics is leading to another home danger, being poisoned by your refrigerator, a problem once solved by completely safe Freon.
Yet another politically caused danger is power backup for each home. While it is true that weather events, such as hurricanes and forest fires have always led to electrical power blackouts (since electrical power became a thing), political solutions to a non-problem have greatly increased the frequency of blackouts. This leads to a large increase in demand for home power backup which leads to a large increase in gasoline and diesel powered generators (much harder to control real air pollution than utility sized generation). An alternate solution is (very expensive) lithium battery packs in the home, producing still more fire danger. https://getpocket.com/explore/item/climate-proofing-your-home-improving-your-backup-power-supply
Time to bring Freon BACK! That would instantly boost the efficiency of all refrigerators and air conditioning units without resorting to reducing function.
It depends on what you mean by Freon. The earliest non-flammable non-toxic refrigerants were chlorinated fluorocarbons (CFC’s), which were later found to degrade the ozone layer in the stratosphere, reacting with ozone (O3) to form oxygen (O2).
These were gradually replaced by hydrofluorocarbons (HFC’s), which do not degrade the ozone layer, but some of them have high “global warming potential”, as they are reputed to absorb hundreds of times more IR radiation per unit mass than CO2.
Since this website is used to discuss human impact on climate change (or lack thereof), leakage of small amounts of HFC’s might not be a serious problem, but for those who worry about it, a new class of refrigerant called hydrofluoro-olefins (HFO) has been used recently, with very low “global warming potential”.
Ozone-depleting or global warming potential is not the only measure of a refrigerant. Some of the early flammable and/or toxic refrigerants, such as propane or ammonia, are more efficient than HFC’s or HFO’s, meaning that they require less compression power for the same cooling capacity. Propane is still used in industrial refrigeration, such as in refineries or gas-processing plants which are well-equipped to handle flammable materials.
The actual goal is to prevent the hoi polloi from owning their own vehicles. Once the internal combustion engines are gone, they can ban the electric vehicles for safety reasons.
This should result in shippers putting EVs on a separate barge and towing it behind the main ship. If a fire starts they would just cut it loose. EV delivery costs would soar, but they should, anyway.
Hey, they are still hazardous AFTER landing! I live on a rural road. A driver lost control of a Prius in straight stretch, fell into a ditch, flipped the car, and it landed sunny-side up on top of my mailbox. Then it set the wooden frame and support on fire. Three times. It only quit igniting my mailbox structure AFTER they pulled the car OFF the FLATTENED remains. Fire crew was shaking their heads in disbelief. Cost the drivers insurance company $675 to replace the framework. At least they didn’t blame ME for the fire!
Google News Search “electric car fire cargo ship”
First page turns up the following media outlets:
Euronews.com Automotive News Europe CBS News Reuters Reuters Electrek Reuters Sky News Daily Mail CBS News Motor1.com Jalopnik Road & Track MotorTrend Autoweek DW The Guardian Carscoops France 24 Daily Mail The Drive autoevolution AP News HT Auto The Drive TVP World Forbes Business Insider Automotive News Europe SlashGear DW
Please, do not confuse the lack of Fox News references in the top search results from Google – that appears to be censorship, as Google consistently pushes Fox News references to page 3 or 4 of the search results. If you throw Fox News on to the end of that search to force Google to return those results, you will find that Fox indeed has covered the story … 3 days ago, 4 days ago, two from 5 days ago, July 6th, 7th, 11th etc.
“There may be some serious insurance issues preventing electric vehicles from being shipped in freighters in the future.”. Or being parked in multi-storey car parks. Or being parked under or next to a house. Or entering a shopping centre car park. Or entering any car park (or bus terminal). Or going to a charging station. Or being charged in the street. Or being charged at home. Or being displayed in a car sales showroom. Or being assembled in a factory.
Government agencies are going to buy whole fleets of EV’s. There should be rules for where these things can be parked.
I don’t think an underground parking space underneath a government building is a good place to park lots of EV’s. Terrorists would find this a very good target. All they would have to do is get a small fire going in the basement parking lot, and the whole building goes down eventually.
Call me Machiavellian but parking EVs under government buildings sounds like an excellent idea. Then you can just demolish the entire government building to put out the fire. Get the government workers out first of course but health and safety regulations would see them evacuate early anyway.
“Or being assembled in a factory.” _________________________
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Good one (-:
+10
AWG
July 30, 2023 2:29 pm
This is the second reported fire that was stuffed full of high-end luxury cars…
In a collapsing market…
And the numbers of certain types of cars keeps changing as if the cargo manifest is whatever people want it to be.
Only the insurers would be able to tell, but has anyone looked in to Jewish lightning?
The Fremantle Highway was owned by a Japanese company, not Jewish. The previous car carrier fires happened on Felicity Ace and Sincerity Ace – both were owned by a different Japanese company but, again, not Jewish.
When I was a kid, there was a phrase n***r rigging, meaning repairs using whatever is at hand as opposed to the parts that were supposed to go in that position. A modern equivalent would be redneck engineering.
On the other hand, AWG probably wasn’t deliberately making an antisemitic slur. Given the ubiquity of the phrase, all we can say is that AGW hasn’t been properly paying attention to the shifting sands of social norms.
What is missing from these stories are the number of freighters that have caught fire and sunk in the past 20 or 30 years, and the number now carrying EVs, and the number carrying ‘ICE’ vehicles but no EVs, and the ‘ICE’ vehicles that are shipped with fuel in the tanks.
I suspect such issues are being investigated by insurance companies.
Does the motion of the ship on the ocean have any impact of the EV battery?
So many questions. I think I’ll have a beer.
That was then. I understand that cars are driven on and off these car carriers, so they must have some fuel in the tank if they are ICE cars. Apparently they disconnect the batteries of ICE cars, but you know how stiff those battery cables are; maybe they get loose, touch the terminals again – intermittently, start arcing, who knows what can happen. And if a fire starts and there’s even a handful of EVs around, then the fire can’t be extinguished using CO2 or water.
I also understand that in driving cars onto the car carriers, they go up inclined steel ramps onto horizontal steel decks. If an EV is low-slung, has a longer wheelbase, or is carelessly driven, “bottoming out” as it leaves the ramp is a possibility, and that’s where the battery is. The Fremantle Highway was only about 200 km out of Bremerhaven where the cars were loaded, so a loading-related incident is a distinct possibility.
How would that help? The problem is within the battery and how the elements combine during a thermal runaway, nothing to do with how the battery interacts with the car.
Rud Istvan
July 30, 2023 2:43 pm
The original report was 25 EVs. After checking the manifest, the correct number is 498 out of ~3300. The surviving crew has said the fire started in an EV then rapidly spread to adjacent EVs. No wonder they couldn’t put it out.
Ultimate destination was Singapore, hence all the high end makes.
Tom Halla
July 30, 2023 2:46 pm
I think insurance companies will oppose parking a BEV in an attached garage. Apartment buildings, especially a high rise, would be a horror.
Our high end Fort Lauderdale beach Condo building first three interior concrete floors are semi hurricane proof garage parking. We allow hybrids (we own one), even plug in hybrids, but NOT EVs. Two reasons.
The building electric circuits are amperage inadequate to charge more than just a few of them even if the owner were to pay for a garage charging installation. We all have both 120 and 240 service because all the cooking and hot water is electric.
Fire insurance risk. The rest of us don’t want our condo fees and auto insurance to rise a lot because of few EV nitwits.
For most residences, running a full up rapid charger would need running new electrical service. And if one’s neighbors also did so, it would require new feed circuits and branch transformers. None of which would be cheap.
In our rebar/concrete hurricane proof 26 story building, impossible at any cost. All the electric cable conduits are inside the concrete pillars and floors. You would have to tear the thing down and rebuild from ground up for enough new wiring capacity. Not gonna happen any time soon.
The US quant 110 V domestic power is a small hurdle . Most of the world 240V domestic is a lot better
But having a proper fast charger at a house doesnt add up , as mostly you have all night to charge up- until they start to restrict their usage to keep the grid running.
I know of no US homes that do not have 240 volt mains.
I do not think any exist.
Clothes dryers, Central AC, electric stoves and electric water heaters…all use 240.
As do most pool pumps, well pumps, and anything else that draws a lot of power.
Two legs, 120 each.
240 total voltage for L1 to L2.
Know little about electricity do you should I bring up phase, well in the use the houses are 120 volts on one side of a center tap transformer and the other side is 120 volts making each 180 degrees out of phase with the other both hit zero at the same time both hit -180 and +180 at the same time giving you and RMS voltage across both legs combined of RMS voltage 240. Now do you have any idea what the hell three phase power is(hint each leg is 120 degrees out from one another?) I do, there was I time I could do the math in an AC circuit and tell you what the voltage was and lag and in phase was a a given time. Have not had to do that since school. Oh if you want a fast charger in you home my understanding is you need three phase installed. The transformer on the easement on my property line is three phase each primary is at 7000 volts. Funny part is that three phase primary power is running between me and my neighbor house with no easement.
In the past it was very difficult to get three phase installed in a residential address. Commercial isn’t a problem and we have it all over the place on our commercial rental property. The only problem is that it’s a bit expensive to get it installed but some of our large compressors and other industrial equipment can’t get enough power from 220.
The biggest user is the ice man who as the name suggest is in the business of producing 300 pound ice cubs. That takes a really big refrigeration unit.
Wasn’t there an article not so long ago that said New England (or some part thereof) EV owners were on a 12 year waiting list to have fast chargers connected to the grid?
Here in the UK our woke councils that have bought battery powered refuse trucks have solved the recharging issues. Having purchased the fleet the council were then told there was no possibility of connecting suitable power lines to recharge the trucks.
The council being wise and ready for any woke policy initiative immediately purchased a diesel generator set that runs flat out recharging the ‘battery powered’ (sic) fleet of refuse trucks.
I’m not understanding why the conduits can’t be attached to the outside of the pillars and ceiling.
Only reason I can think of would be ceiling penetration issues. Running it up a central shaft (which it should have something of that nature) should resolve that.
In the UK there are some 300,000 Low Voltage substations and c. 1m feeders and about 450,000 kms of buried cables. It is estimated only 10-20% of this is capable of supporting EV charging and replacing the other 80% would require digging up most of the non motorway roads in the country. Some years ago a figure of £60bn was put on the cost od doing this. Likely much higher now.
Wait, what?
What does that mean, they lowered it?
How?
Did they go into everyone’s electric panel and install a 75 amp main service cut-off breaker?
That seems very unlikely to me.
Few people know the exact power draw of various appliances and other devices, which would be required to not be constantly tripping out the breaker.
Standard electric service has been at least 100 amps for quite a while now.
I am pretty sure NEC 230 states that it is illegal to have a main service disconnect rated lower than the max load which might be drawn, in case, for example, everything in the home was turned on at once.
For a home that has electric everything, AC, heat, clothes dryer, water heater, range/oven, it is gonna be over 75 amps.
For a large home, the AC or electric heat can pull that much.
The service disconnecting means shall have a rating not less than the calculated load to be carried, determined in accordance with Part III, IV, or V of Article 220, as applicable. In no case shall the rating be lower than specified in 230.79(A), (B), (C), or (D). (A) One-Circuit Installations. For installations to supply only limited loads of a single branch circuit, the service disconnecting means shall have a rating of not less than 15 amperes. (B) Two-Circuit Installations. For installations consisting of not more than two 2-wire branch circuits, the service disconnecting means shall have a rating of not less than 30 amperes. (C) One-Family Dwellings. For a one-family dwelling, the service disconnecting means shall have a rating of not less than 100 amperes, 3-wire. (D) All Others. For all other installations, the service disconnecting means shall have a rating of not less than 60 amperes.
I don’t know what service one would need for charging an EV but I do know that it is going to cost me about $3,000 to upgrade from 100 amp service to 200 amp service. That price is for putting the new breaker box in the location where the 100 Amp box is currently located. And that price is what it will cost for my nephew to do it.
I will run the service to the new garage also. Not to charge an EV but to run power tools for my work shop. I don’t even leave the batteries for my battery powered tools or weedwacker charge unattended.
Need the upgrade because I’m building on and will need a larger A/C unit. Furnace is NG, but water heater, stove, and well pump are all electric.
Also going to have my incoming service put in underground from the pole. The wire coming from the pole would run right through the roofline of the addition.
A 200 amp service will probably handle what you are doing but you might price a 300 amp service. If the price difference isn’t that great it might be a selling point should EVs become more common.
We will live here until we can’t anymore and by that time I won’t care about resale value. 200 will do what I need. Not running any big transformers or welders or anything with 220 3 phase motors.
My brother has a condo up the road from you. He replaced his Flordia car recently. Bought a conventional ICE vehicle. The nightmare is being stuck in a BEV during an evacuation.
Ron Long
July 30, 2023 2:52 pm
The clues are all around us, and still they won’t acknowledge the truth. No, I’m not talking about UFO’s and aliens, I’m referring to electric vehicle spontaneous battery fires. Beam me up Scotty, before I get fried.
Speaking of UFO’s, did anyone see the recent Congressional testimony about UFO’s?
One of the witnesses (David Grusch I think) testified under oath that the US govt was in possession of alien space vehicles and the alien “biologics” (as he called them) who were supposedly recovered from the crashed vehicles.
They are probably the remains of a pidgeon. Pidgeons were used in in some early experimental UAVs for terminal guidance. The pigeon beak was fitted with an electrode that would make contact with a conductive window and steer the UAV to target. The window showed the target. the pidgeon was trained to peck at the target. Birds have fast and acute vision.
One solution: production and shipment of EVs without the batteries.
Batteries produced and mounted in the cars in country (or continent)
where the car is sold.
Not really possible. For example, in Bolt and Tesla the EV battery is so big it basically is the floorpan of the car. The car is assembled above and around it.
For most cars, yes, the EV fuel tank can be replaced (usually after 10-20 years) at a cost of anywhere between $5,000 – $35,000 depending on
Battery Manufacturer
Car Make/Model
Range (fuel tank capacity)
Unclear if this is just the cost of the battery or if Installation Labor is included
And will will the batteries get to destination? It isn’t the seats or headlight that start fires.
J Boles
July 30, 2023 3:24 pm
Channel surfing today I chanced up on the PBS new hour, a segment on ‘climate anxiety’ and they spoke with a Leslie Davenport a psychologist dealing with such issues, pretty funny the whole thing, but I bet those affected by it don’t have any solar panels on the roof or make any sacrifices for the climate, they keep on using FF every day of course.
JohninRedding
July 30, 2023 3:36 pm
The push for electric cars is a farce. It is not solving any serious problem but creating many of it’s own. Let’s hope problems like this make our leaders take a serious look at the whole climate change hoax and not be blinded by the phony science being used to sell it.
Jamaica NYC
July 30, 2023 3:40 pm
Can they ship them strapped to the top deck, I.e. outside of the hull?
Hmmmm . . . interesting concept . . . EV batteries (under and outside the car bodies) subjected to wind- and sea-driven salt water exposure . . . what could possible go wrong with that?
Who would buy a car that had been exposed to salt water for the whole voyage? Even if the battery survived intact. If EV’s are carried in the future, it’ll most likely be as containers of disassembled parts, to be completed on arrival.
I do not think salt spray is good for cars, let alone new cars.
Corrosion issues aside, eV in particular, not good to expose to sea water.
Salt water is a major cause of fires in EVs.
If this incident can be properly traced to an electric car fire it’s obviously going to cause some rethinking in the shipping of electric vehicles.
Or maybe just large insurance premium increases on all of us who couldn’t possibly afford such expensive automobiles. After all, BEV cars are a necessity and peasants are cheaper by the dozen.
Insurance premiums are already increasing in the UK, but of course it’s always “other factors” causing the increase. Brexit, Ukraine, lockdowns.. the usual suspects.
I got a charge out of reading this story, but it was shocking to read about the number of EVs that could be involved in the current fire. I don’t believe the MSM have unnecessarily amped up the coverage.
There’s really no, ahem, shortage of reasons for why an EV may have started the whole thing.
And there’s really no doubt that many will take a dim view of this event, as its not a good plug for EVs being safe in storage.
This is the second reported fire that was stuffed full of high-end luxury cars…
In a collapsing market…
And the numbers of certain types of cars keeps changing as if the cargo manifest is whatever people want it to be. AWG
I didn’t reply directly to AWG because I suspect the original comment might disappear.
Insurance fraud is a possibility, somebody died though so a homicide charge could result.
I wonder if anyone has run the statistics on lithium battery fires per million vehicle hours.
The insurance industry is very good at statistics and also hates to make big payouts. I’m guessing that the industry would know if the insurance companies have started an investigation.
I strongly doubt insurance fraud was a factor. The numbers of EV’s carried was a smaller fraction of the total, around 1/5th or 1/6th so where is the sense in destroying ICE cars just to take out a few hundred EV’s. Also many of those cars were high-end luxury models, so likely being shipped to customers who had paid in advance, rather than ‘on spec.’ For me, that whole line of enquiry into insurance fraud is a complete non-starter.
On the other hand, ‘something’ caused those EV batteries to detonate, I wonder if they looked at the crew’s handling of the ship?
Not quite. Some of the cheap batteries built without safety features are ticking time bombs but, for the rest, ‘something’ is needed as a trigger – a slight knock or damage, maybe. The scary thing is where you have loads of EV’s close together the heat of one thermal runaway will cause others to do the same in a kind of chain reaction.
J Boles
July 30, 2023 4:51 pm
I wonder, they must ship the EV cars with batts fully charged so to drive them on to the ship, maybe ship them with batts dead so no fire hazard and then charge them at dealership?
Fully discharging lithium-ion batteries of the type used in EVs to the point they produce low, non-dangerous voltage—say, below 50 vdc—will greatly shorten their subsequent cycle life, if not ruin them outright.
From https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/9f78ve/when_batteries_are_made_are_they_already_charged/ : “I’m a mechanical engineer who spent some time working in a lithium ion battery research lab. Manufacturing experimental Li-ion batteries was one of my main day to day tasks . . . “A Li-ion battery anode is manufactured by putting a coating of graphite (combined with a binder and maybe some performance increasing additives) onto a sheet of copper foil. The anode contains no lithium when manufactured. “The cathode is manufactured by putting a coating of lithium containing material (again in combination with a binder and additives) onto a sheet of aluminum foil. This material is commonly known as cathode active material (CAM), and for some examples of the chemistry you can look up LCO and NMC. “Because the cathode is lithiated at manufacture and the anode is not, the battery will have some charge when it is first assembled.“
(my bold emphasis added)
Also, with respect to my previous post, please note that I was referring to Li-ion battery pack voltage being below 50 vdc, and not intending that be applicable to the voltage on an individual battery cell’s voltage. For example, the 2170 form factor individual battery cells used in current Tesla EV’s have a design voltage of about 4 vdc at full charge, whereas the battery pack voltage is nominally 350 vdc (400 vdc max).
How many times do I have to say this? The charge in the battery, or lack thereof, IS NOT RELEVANT TO THE FIRE HAZARD, and anybody who thinks it is needs to stop commenting on a science blog until he figures out what the tarnation he’s talking about. The electrolyte is flammable and the LOX is an oxidizer, and all it takes is contact with air or water to start the fire. It has nothing, nothing to do with the charge.
No charge —> no possibility of an electrical short (internal or external) leading to melting leading to battery case breach leading to outbreak of fire.
Breach of hermetically-sealed battery pack case —> yeah, theoretically possible but nowhere near as likely as an electrical short and, depending on the size of the leak, it is problematic that chemical reaction of air with a battery cell electrolyte will lead to fire outbreak as opposed to say, just heat generation.
Also, LOX??? I don’t see that J Boles made any reference to such.
EV’s cannot be pushed or towed when the battery is flat, when they break down on the road they have to be lifted onto the back of a flatbed truck. Not an efficient way of unloading a ferry.
antigtiff
July 30, 2023 4:52 pm
EV scooters and bikes are becoming more popular and people in urban areas may bring the battery up to their apartment to recharge over night….and I have read about a fire from one of these cases.
If I’m waiting at a bus stop and a battery-electric bus shows up, I don’t get on; I just wait for the next bus and hope it’s a diesel. Accidents happen and I’m old enough that I don’t mind dying, but there surely aren’t many worse ways to die than in an EV fire on a crowded bus.
It has to happen sooner or later; let’s just hope it causes our lords and masters to think again.
quote:“Batteries for e-bikes should be regulated in the same way as fireworks, heavy machinery or medical devices because of the fire risk they pose, a charity has said. BBC(4days ago)
They’re talking about the little scooters = the ones like children’s scooters which have tiny wheels and you stand up on them.
They say that because the design of those with the battery slung underneath and close to the ground, the battery gets damaged easily.
e.g. By riding over kerbs
Then when it’s being charged, the damage manifests by overheatings, burnings and explodings.
But electric cars are hardly any different from the scooters. Their batteries are slung underneath and close to the road and they get ridden/driven over kerbs, pot-holes, crappy road repairs, speed humps, sleeping policeman, old folks, wheelchairs, zimmer frames and pushchairs – much more so than a little scooter would or does.
I’ve just sussed it haven’t I?
It’s the Roll-On Roll-Off ferries themselves
Others will have more experience of those things than I do but on the few occasions I have driven on/off a RoRo – the jolt you get on the ramp where ‘ship meets land’ is was always horrendous.
Because of the movement of water/waves/wind and tide, it always will be.
So if the ship moves at the instant that car is being ridden over the ramp, that huge and very hard metal plate is going to disembowel the car.
Especially EVs are they are always so ‘low slung’ – their ground clearance is the minimum that manufacturers can get away with.
There is the reason that EVs on RoRo ferries are catching fire – its the very design of the loading ramp – smashing a lump out of the battery as the cars ‘roll’ onboard
Add to that a ‘couldn’t care less‘ attitude by low-paid probably migrant employees driving the things on/off – exacerbated by the pressure they’ll be under ‘not to hang about‘
Plus the sheer propensity for Lithium Ion to burn. Nothing else could happen and it signifies how EVs are ‘going to age’ when large numbers of them do ‘hit the road’
haha. Literally.
Because it is ‘hitting the road’ that is igniting the little scooters.
edit to add:
I should have but didn’t bookmark the story BUT, this thing is gonna get massively worse if Elon has his way with his latest brainwave.
Instead of the battery being a separate element hung from a solid chassis, Elon wants to build ‘Electric Monocoques‘
He’s looking to have the battery be an integral part of the fenders, bumpers, wings and sills.
That is going to be such a disaster in the making.
Those parts are intended to absorb bumps and jolts and minor crashes – Lithium Ion batteries are not and never will be able to.
According to a press update I’ve seen it didn’t carry 25, but 249 electric cars.
The investigation will be interesting – and I guess EV customers are going to have to accept another price bump as shipping insurance just went up. Probably by a lot.
Only yesterday, I read a very detailed description of how these cars are loaded and why access to any one which catches fire is completely inaccesible to firefighters. That’s the second such massively-expensive fire, and the result MUST be the refusal of shipping companies to carry EVs as cargo. Good riddance, I say, with these things being supported only by technically-ignorant politicians. Those subsidies will never be sufficiently generousto counteract the cost of EV fires!
There have been more – the Felicity Ace sank in 2022 but it’s sister-ship the Sincerity Ace caught fire in the same way in 2018, the ship was salvaged in 2019 but the cargo (3500 Nissan cars) was destroyed. Add to that a number of fires originating in vehicles carried on ro-ro ferries which may or may not have been EV’s.
They’ll probably have to begin shipping the cars without batteries installed and shipping the batteries by rail to be installed later
I guess that would be on Joe Biden’s trans-Atlantic railroad line?
By rail, LOL last I check there is no rail across any ocean.
These were going from Germany to Egypt. There should be a ground (rail or otherwise) between the two. Perhaps a little slower but there of course the trip takes some 53 hours through 12 countries
Indeed! And I’m not sure thay’d want trainloads of batteries passing through the Channel Tunnel…
Your geography is terrible – what kind of journey from Germany to Egypt goes through the Channel tunnel?
Richard,
In lalaland imagination, anything is possible to save the world, which has saved itself without us for about 4 billion years
Egypt would need US foreign aid to buy these European cars
The ship likely will be a total loss, about $150 to $200 million, and the 4000 vehicle cargo of new German cars, worth at least $250 million, will also be a total loss.
Not to worry, both are insured by the usual insurance companies in London and Zurich.
This could happen in a multi-story garage in Manhattan, etc.
I took the suggestion of shipping the batteries and cars separately as a general suggestion, not limited to just this case.
The main problem of shipping the batteries separately is the problem of installing the batteries in the car bodies on arrival. In an electric car, the battery weighs almost as much as the rest of the car.
Not much different from having 4,600 trucks, 140 busses and 7,300 cars (All EV) passing through the tunnel daily (current daily channel tunnel traffic)
The actual destinartion was the far East. Egypt was only mentioned as the ship was using the Suez Canal
Well, so much for an overland route, those ‘stani don’t like to cooperate with themselves let alone other neighbors like India. China too doesn’t have connecting roads with neighbors. But then China makes so many Cheap Crappy EVs, why would they want those made by other outside agencies unless to create more cheap crappy knockoffs
These EV’s are built around the battery, in the Tesla it is part of the structure, so no.
This is an easily solvable problem. Just put each EV on its own towline behind the ship like this. Heh.
Any nail in the EV coffin is a good thing.
Guess again, 500:
Trigger warning: He speaks Australian, a variant of English known for it’s frequent colourful expletives.
“frequent colourful expletives.”
Sounds fairly tame to me. 😉
He was rather restrained. That must be because it’s in public.
I think “variant of English” is being extremely generous.
What can I say mate, that was bonzer!
i have a new idol
I will take the over on that number.
There is a reason why you can’t put a phone or a laptop in checked bags.
Mostly because they’ll get stolen.
My cellphone tends to get very warm if not hot whenever I recharge it.
According to “Geoff Buys Cars” the MailOnline headline was changed from 25 electric cars to 350. He has a screenshot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-biwc2NLwtw
Sorry. Ignore this comment. It says “350 Mercedes”. I’ve tried to cancel the comment but have been unsuccesful.
What I usually do is to replace the text with something like “Never mind”.
The implications go far beyond the shipping of these vehicles.
If fires like this can start with brand new cars, professionally packed and stowed, then imagine the risks to ordinary car ferries and the like carrying large numbers of EVs in various states of repair. And of course, a cargo vessel carries just a small number of highly trained crew. Passenger ferries carry hundreds of members of the public.
There is a disaster waiting to happen if we continue down the line of having more and more EVs. A fire at sea is always a terrible danger to life, but these EVs can’t be easily extinguished when they go up on dry land when attended to by professional firefighters. The idea of a hold full of them with hundreds of men, women and children on the same ship doesn’t bear thinking about.
Burning freight ship was carrying more electric cars than first reported, shipping company says
K Line says vessel was carrying more EVs than first reported by Coastguard
Initial list said 2,857 cars were on board including 25 EVs, but now revised to 3,783 vehicles, including 498 EVs
Officials now ‘looking at various scenarios to determine the next steps’
The news comes as salvage crews have now boarded the vessel for the first time as heat, flames and smoke have eased.
Source
Salvage crews only attached two tow lines, then got off. Trying to tow it to safe mooring before it sinks like the last one.
They should tow it to deeper waters where it’s burned out hull will not block shipping lanes.
I’d say they should nuke it from orbit. Only way to be sure.
Two houses have been burned down, in VA and in AZ, from spontaneous battery fires in Chevy Bolts. Some airports including MIA are banning Chevy Bolts in their garages. Thousands of electric cars were recalled due to those fires.
You’ve worked hard and managed to buy a house for your family. Life is good. Do you really want to risk it all by putting an electric car in your garage? When government MANDATES you drive only an electric car (that will happen in 2030 – 2050, no more ICE vehicles) will you feel safe sleeping in your own home?
If this can happen in a car carrying ship it can happen in your garage or the underground multi-level parking garage of a high-rise. Even the best fire protection systems – active and passive – can fail in a fire that lasts days. Is it just a matter of time?
Its even more likely there as that will be when/where they’re being charged… When runaway battery fires are most likely to occur
In the last year in NYC there have been about 120 serious apartment fires caused by charging e-bikes.
“The New York Fire Department investigated just 30 e-bike fires in 2019. Last year, that number jumped to 220.”
“E-Bike Battery Fires Can Be Deadly. Here’s How to Prevent One in Your Home.To stay safe, don’t mix and match chargers, buy aftermarket batteries or charge in extreme temperatures” By Nicole Nguyen on July 30, 2023 at WSJ.com.
Don’t charge in extreme temperatures? Like summer?
More: “How E-Bike Battery Fires Became a Deadly Crisis in New York CityCity leaders are racing to regulate battery-powered mobility devices, which have been the source of over 100 fires so far this year.” By Winnie Hu on June 21, 2023 at NYTimes.com
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/21/nyregion/e-bike-lithium-battery-fires-nyc.html
The London Fire Brigade has dealt with over 80 E Bike fires so far this year as well as 18 E scooter fires. E scooters were banned from the London Underground last year following three fires in a matter of weeks.
From what I’ve read, while the innovation of home refrigerators was initially widely celebrated, the available refrigerants were rather toxic (the same refrigerants being promoted today to replace the ones currently being used). Entire families were killed in their sleep by refrigerant leaks. Many people started locating their refrigerators in the back yard. The invention of Freon saved the day for refrigeration.
There’s almost as much dimethyl-ether in that wart removal kit in your medicine cabinet as is used in a modern refrigerator….and four times as much butane in that Ronson cigarette lighter refiller by your wife’s hair curler, not to mention 20 times as much in the butane stove stored with your tent in the basement, or propane in your toolbox soldering torch.
I was intrigued by your assertions, so I looked up some actual numbers. I didn’t have time to check them all, but I found that a typical home refrigerator uses about 80 grams of R600a (isobutane) refrigerant. Ronson butane refills range in size from about 45 grams to 175 grams. The refrigerator does use less than I expected, but to say there is “four times as much” in a lighter refill of unspecified size seems to be a bit of an exaggeration.
Seems to be true according to Museum Victoria’s page on refrigerators:
“Early mechanical refrigerators used ammonia, methyl chloride or sulphur dioxide as refrigerants, all highly toxic gases”
And this is relevant, how?
Batteries are not a new technology.
The problem with Lithium batteries is new. Lead acid are 98% recyclable and if they have a hydrogen explosion seldom is they a fire. Next is nickel Cadmium, no real fire danger their since the materials don’t combust with oxygen being available. It is nice that you do state the Batteries are not a new technology because that the fundamental problem with EV. EV technology is over 140 years old and still have the fundamental problem of energy density in the batteries. Oh by the way even with that solve you have the fundamental problem that high energy dense batteries can discharge all at once. Nothing like having a bomb in the garage.
Non lithium batteries use water as part of the chemical process. This limits the temperature of the cell to boiling. Lithium doesn’t use water and as the result the temperature rase is only limited by the amount of fuel available.
One of the failure modes for lead acid batteries is a plate short but to my knowledge it has never started a fire.
Lead-acid batteries, if they are severely discharged, can release hydrogen gas. The plastic caps over the acid (used for refilling with water) tend to pop off of a typical car battery if hydrogen gas builds up a little pressure. Released hydrogen trapped under a car hood could form a flammable mixture with air in a parked car, but in a moving car, the turbulence of air moving under the engine would likely dilute the hydrogen below the flammability limit.
Fires from lead-acid batteries are possible, but rare, and of limited extent, primarily because the amount of hydrogen that can be produced is limited. A typical lead-acid battery used only to start a gasoline-powered car is generally portable by one person, despite the high density of lead.
In an electric vehicle, a lithium-ion battery has to be able to store enough electrical energy to power the car for about 200 miles, so it is much larger and heavier than a lead-acid battery used only to turn the starter motor for a few seconds. There is a lot more “fuel” available for a lithium-ion battery fire in an electric vehicle than in a lead-acid starter-motor battery.
In an electric vehicle, a lithium-ion battery has to be able to store enough electrical energy to power the car for about 200 miles, so it is much larger and heavier than a lead-acid battery used only to turn the starter motor for a few seconds. There is a lot more “fuel” available for a lithium-ion battery fire in an electric vehicle than in a lead-acid starter-motor battery.
This is all absolutely true,but there is another factor which renders lithium battery fires particularly dangerous and difficult to extinguish, namely that that the oxidant and fuel are present together in the same place, unlike an ordinary fire, which depends on atmospheric oxygen. If you watch a video of a lithium battery cooking off, it’s far more like a huge firework exploding than an ordinary fire.
But the extreme fires caused by lithium batteries are a fairly new thing. The lithium battery “solution” produces a new, essentially impossible to predict or protect against, life threatening danger, even though battery explosions are not a daily event. In parallel, the insanity of climate politics is leading to another home danger, being poisoned by your refrigerator, a problem once solved by completely safe Freon.
Yet another politically caused danger is power backup for each home. While it is true that weather events, such as hurricanes and forest fires have always led to electrical power blackouts (since electrical power became a thing), political solutions to a non-problem have greatly increased the frequency of blackouts. This leads to a large increase in demand for home power backup which leads to a large increase in gasoline and diesel powered generators (much harder to control real air pollution than utility sized generation). An alternate solution is (very expensive) lithium battery packs in the home, producing still more fire danger.
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/climate-proofing-your-home-improving-your-backup-power-supply
Time to bring Freon BACK! That would instantly boost the efficiency of all refrigerators and air conditioning units without resorting to reducing function.
It depends on what you mean by Freon. The earliest non-flammable non-toxic refrigerants were chlorinated fluorocarbons (CFC’s), which were later found to degrade the ozone layer in the stratosphere, reacting with ozone (O3) to form oxygen (O2).
These were gradually replaced by hydrofluorocarbons (HFC’s), which do not degrade the ozone layer, but some of them have high “global warming potential”, as they are reputed to absorb hundreds of times more IR radiation per unit mass than CO2.
Since this website is used to discuss human impact on climate change (or lack thereof), leakage of small amounts of HFC’s might not be a serious problem, but for those who worry about it, a new class of refrigerant called hydrofluoro-olefins (HFO) has been used recently, with very low “global warming potential”.
Ozone-depleting or global warming potential is not the only measure of a refrigerant. Some of the early flammable and/or toxic refrigerants, such as propane or ammonia, are more efficient than HFC’s or HFO’s, meaning that they require less compression power for the same cooling capacity. Propane is still used in industrial refrigeration, such as in refineries or gas-processing plants which are well-equipped to handle flammable materials.
The actual goal is to prevent the hoi polloi from owning their own vehicles. Once the internal combustion engines are gone, they can ban the electric vehicles for safety reasons.
This should result in shippers putting EVs on a separate barge and towing it behind the main ship. If a fire starts they would just cut it loose. EV delivery costs would soar, but they should, anyway.
Hey, they are still hazardous AFTER landing! I live on a rural road. A driver lost control of a Prius in straight stretch, fell into a ditch, flipped the car, and it landed sunny-side up on top of my mailbox. Then it set the wooden frame and support on fire. Three times. It only quit igniting my mailbox structure AFTER they pulled the car OFF the FLATTENED remains. Fire crew was shaking their heads in disbelief. Cost the drivers insurance company $675 to replace the framework. At least they didn’t blame ME for the fire!
Separate highways for EVs
Google News Search “electric car fire cargo ship”
First page turns up the following media outlets:
Euronews.com
Automotive News Europe
CBS News
Reuters
Reuters
Electrek
Reuters
Sky News
Daily Mail
CBS News
Motor1.com
Jalopnik
Road & Track
MotorTrend
Autoweek
DW
The Guardian
Carscoops
France 24
Daily Mail
The Drive
autoevolution
AP News
HT Auto
The Drive
TVP World
Forbes
Business Insider
Automotive News Europe
SlashGear
DW
Hmmm, what’s missing in that list?
As I am a CDN, begin with CBC but also: CNN, MSNBC, NYT, Washington Post, LA Times
Throw in the beeb too
Surprisingly it has not been reported by FoxNews. Perhaps a skeletal weekend staff for some of these org.s?
Fox has moved to the dark side in the last few years, I no longer watch them.
Please, do not confuse the lack of Fox News references in the top search results from Google – that appears to be censorship, as Google consistently pushes Fox News references to page 3 or 4 of the search results. If you throw Fox News on to the end of that search to force Google to return those results, you will find that Fox indeed has covered the story … 3 days ago, 4 days ago, two from 5 days ago, July 6th, 7th, 11th etc.
Fox News reported it on July 28, adding the tidbit that the number of EVs on board had been significantly under-reported to the Coast Guard.
“There may be some serious insurance issues preventing electric vehicles from being shipped in freighters in the future.”. Or being parked in multi-storey car parks. Or being parked under or next to a house. Or entering a shopping centre car park. Or entering any car park (or bus terminal). Or going to a charging station. Or being charged in the street. Or being charged at home. Or being displayed in a car sales showroom. Or being assembled in a factory.
“Or being parked in multi-storey car parks”
Government agencies are going to buy whole fleets of EV’s. There should be rules for where these things can be parked.
I don’t think an underground parking space underneath a government building is a good place to park lots of EV’s. Terrorists would find this a very good target. All they would have to do is get a small fire going in the basement parking lot, and the whole building goes down eventually.
Call me Machiavellian but parking EVs under government buildings sounds like an excellent idea. Then you can just demolish the entire government building to put out the fire. Get the government workers out first of course but health and safety regulations would see them evacuate early anyway.
Doesn’t matter how the fire that destroyed the building started, the FBI can cover up anything.
Gee, no charges by the FBI, means no work for the US DOJ
“Or being assembled in a factory.”
_________________________
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Good one (-:
+10
This is the second reported fire that was stuffed full of high-end luxury cars…
In a collapsing market…
And the numbers of certain types of cars keeps changing as if the cargo manifest is whatever people want it to be.
Only the insurers would be able to tell, but has anyone looked in to Jewish lightning?
The Fremantle Highway was owned by a Japanese company, not Jewish. The previous car carrier fires happened on Felicity Ace and Sincerity Ace – both were owned by a different Japanese company but, again, not Jewish.
Oh dear. link It’s vernacular and doesn’t need to have anything to do with actual Jews.
I was aware of both the context and the connotations – just making a point. Shame you missed it, but still.
When I was a kid, there was a phrase n***r rigging, meaning repairs using whatever is at hand as opposed to the parts that were supposed to go in that position. A modern equivalent would be redneck engineering.
Tell me, would you use the phrase n***r rigging?
My term has always been bailing wire and bubble gum.
You’ll have to stop using that, MacGyver has a patent.
Absolutely not.
On the other hand, AWG probably wasn’t deliberately making an antisemitic slur. Given the ubiquity of the phrase, all we can say is that AGW hasn’t been properly paying attention to the shifting sands of social norms.
Maybe it’s a regional thing, but I’ve never heard it before.
I doubt anyone who uses the other phrase meant it as a racial slur.
Poor people can’t always afford to repair using new parts, so slapping something together with what you have on hand is typical.
I hesitate to call 3, but the euroferry Olympia re-ignited after 10 days:
https://maritime-executive.com/article/fire-reignites-aboard-ro-ro-euroferry-olympia-as-search-continues
They blamed it on a truck initially, but I have my doubts.
Not sure about the Olympia or the similar Norman Atlantic ferries but this may be of interest: https://www.ukpandi.com/news-and-resources/articles/2021/car-carrier-fires-and-the-associated-risks-with-electric-vehicle-transportation/
I also wasn’t aware that some ferry operators have charging ports available on the car decks.
Bad move!
What is missing from these stories are the number of freighters that have caught fire and sunk in the past 20 or 30 years, and the number now carrying EVs, and the number carrying ‘ICE’ vehicles but no EVs, and the ‘ICE’ vehicles that are shipped with fuel in the tanks.
I suspect such issues are being investigated by insurance companies.
Does the motion of the ship on the ocean have any impact of the EV battery?
So many questions. I think I’ll have a beer.
When I shipped my vehicle from the UK to Africa in 1971 it was standard practice to drain the fuel tank before it was loaded.
That was then. I understand that cars are driven on and off these car carriers, so they must have some fuel in the tank if they are ICE cars. Apparently they disconnect the batteries of ICE cars, but you know how stiff those battery cables are; maybe they get loose, touch the terminals again – intermittently, start arcing, who knows what can happen. And if a fire starts and there’s even a handful of EVs around, then the fire can’t be extinguished using CO2 or water.
I also understand that in driving cars onto the car carriers, they go up inclined steel ramps onto horizontal steel decks. If an EV is low-slung, has a longer wheelbase, or is carelessly driven, “bottoming out” as it leaves the ramp is a possibility, and that’s where the battery is. The Fremantle Highway was only about 200 km out of Bremerhaven where the cars were loaded, so a loading-related incident is a distinct possibility.
What you need is a battery isolation switch – the sort of thing most railway diesel locos have (and, yes, they have batteries for starting).
How would that help? The problem is within the battery and how the elements combine during a thermal runaway, nothing to do with how the battery interacts with the car.
The original report was 25 EVs. After checking the manifest, the correct number is 498 out of ~3300. The surviving crew has said the fire started in an EV then rapidly spread to adjacent EVs. No wonder they couldn’t put it out.
Ultimate destination was Singapore, hence all the high end makes.
I think insurance companies will oppose parking a BEV in an attached garage. Apartment buildings, especially a high rise, would be a horror.
Our high end Fort Lauderdale beach Condo building first three interior concrete floors are semi hurricane proof garage parking. We allow hybrids (we own one), even plug in hybrids, but NOT EVs. Two reasons.
For most residences, running a full up rapid charger would need running new electrical service. And if one’s neighbors also did so, it would require new feed circuits and branch transformers. None of which would be cheap.
In our rebar/concrete hurricane proof 26 story building, impossible at any cost. All the electric cable conduits are inside the concrete pillars and floors. You would have to tear the thing down and rebuild from ground up for enough new wiring capacity. Not gonna happen any time soon.
The US quant 110 V domestic power is a small hurdle . Most of the world 240V domestic is a lot better
But having a proper fast charger at a house doesnt add up , as mostly you have all night to charge up- until they start to restrict their usage to keep the grid running.
I know of no US homes that do not have 240 volt mains.
I do not think any exist.
Clothes dryers, Central AC, electric stoves and electric water heaters…all use 240.
As do most pool pumps, well pumps, and anything else that draws a lot of power.
Two legs, 120 each.
240 total voltage for L1 to L2.
Know little about electricity do you should I bring up phase, well in the use the houses are 120 volts on one side of a center tap transformer and the other side is 120 volts making each 180 degrees out of phase with the other both hit zero at the same time both hit -180 and +180 at the same time giving you and RMS voltage across both legs combined of RMS voltage 240. Now do you have any idea what the hell three phase power is(hint each leg is 120 degrees out from one another?) I do, there was I time I could do the math in an AC circuit and tell you what the voltage was and lag and in phase was a a given time. Have not had to do that since school. Oh if you want a fast charger in you home my understanding is you need three phase installed. The transformer on the easement on my property line is three phase each primary is at 7000 volts. Funny part is that three phase primary power is running between me and my neighbor house with no easement.
In the past it was very difficult to get three phase installed in a residential address. Commercial isn’t a problem and we have it all over the place on our commercial rental property. The only problem is that it’s a bit expensive to get it installed but some of our large compressors and other industrial equipment can’t get enough power from 220.
The biggest user is the ice man who as the name suggest is in the business of producing 300 pound ice cubs. That takes a really big refrigeration unit.
Wasn’t there an article not so long ago that said New England (or some part thereof) EV owners were on a 12 year waiting list to have fast chargers connected to the grid?
Here in the UK our woke councils that have bought battery powered refuse trucks have solved the recharging issues. Having purchased the fleet the council were then told there was no possibility of connecting suitable power lines to recharge the trucks.
The council being wise and ready for any woke policy initiative immediately purchased a diesel generator set that runs flat out recharging the ‘battery powered’ (sic) fleet of refuse trucks.
I bolted a windmill to the top of my EV. It charges the car while I drive. I sell the extra to my power company.
/jk
I’m not understanding why the conduits can’t be attached to the outside of the pillars and ceiling.
Fire code?
Aesthetics?
I’m not understanding why the conduits can’t be attached to the outside of the pillars and ceiling.
Only reason I can think of would be ceiling penetration issues. Running it up a central shaft (which it should have something of that nature) should resolve that.
“new feed circuits and branch transformers.”
And probably upgrades to substations, transmission lines etc etc.
Oh, don’t worry. With wind and solar, there will not be the watts to run through the system anyway.
In the UK there are some 300,000 Low Voltage substations and c. 1m feeders and about 450,000 kms of buried cables. It is estimated only 10-20% of this is capable of supporting EV charging and replacing the other 80% would require digging up most of the non motorway roads in the country. Some years ago a figure of £60bn was put on the cost od doing this. Likely much higher now.
Interesting discussion with a Doctor of Engineering at Southampton University at
https://v2g.co.uk/2021/05/electric-vehicles-as-energy-smart-appliances/
I live in Jamaica Queens and NYC lowered household amps to 75 because of the load. Electric cars? LOFL
Wait, what?
What does that mean, they lowered it?
How?
Did they go into everyone’s electric panel and install a 75 amp main service cut-off breaker?
That seems very unlikely to me.
Few people know the exact power draw of various appliances and other devices, which would be required to not be constantly tripping out the breaker.
Standard electric service has been at least 100 amps for quite a while now.
I am pretty sure NEC 230 states that it is illegal to have a main service disconnect rated lower than the max load which might be drawn, in case, for example, everything in the home was turned on at once.
For a home that has electric everything, AC, heat, clothes dryer, water heater, range/oven, it is gonna be over 75 amps.
For a large home, the AC or electric heat can pull that much.
NEC 230.79 Rating of Service Disconnecting Means.
The service disconnecting means shall have a rating not less than the calculated load to be carried, determined in accordance with Part III, IV, or V of Article 220, as applicable. In no case shall the rating be lower than specified in 230.79(A), (B), (C), or (D).
(A) One-Circuit Installations. For installations to supply only limited loads of a single branch circuit, the service disconnecting means shall have a rating of not less than 15 amperes.
(B) Two-Circuit Installations. For installations consisting of not more than two 2-wire branch circuits, the service disconnecting means shall have a rating of not less than 30 amperes.
(C) One-Family Dwellings. For a one-family dwelling, the service disconnecting means shall have a rating of not less than 100 amperes, 3-wire.
(D) All Others. For all other installations, the service disconnecting means shall have a rating of not less than 60 amperes.
It is 100.
I don’t know what service one would need for charging an EV but I do know that it is going to cost me about $3,000 to upgrade from 100 amp service to 200 amp service. That price is for putting the new breaker box in the location where the 100 Amp box is currently located. And that price is what it will cost for my nephew to do it.
I will run the service to the new garage also. Not to charge an EV but to run power tools for my work shop. I don’t even leave the batteries for my battery powered tools or weedwacker charge unattended.
Need the upgrade because I’m building on and will need a larger A/C unit. Furnace is NG, but water heater, stove, and well pump are all electric.
Also going to have my incoming service put in underground from the pole. The wire coming from the pole would run right through the roofline of the addition.
Why no gas water heater or stove? Gas water heaters are rather cheaper to run, and gas cooktops are much nicer to use than conventional electric.
Depends if you a natural gas ran where you live, LP is more expensive.
I meant piped natural gas, propane can be more expensive.
Wife prefers electric stove. Gas water heaters require venting. Electric ones do not.
A 200 amp service will probably handle what you are doing but you might price a 300 amp service. If the price difference isn’t that great it might be a selling point should EVs become more common.
We will live here until we can’t anymore and by that time I won’t care about resale value. 200 will do what I need. Not running any big transformers or welders or anything with 220 3 phase motors.
My brother has a condo up the road from you. He replaced his Flordia car recently. Bought a conventional ICE vehicle. The nightmare is being stuck in a BEV during an evacuation.
The clues are all around us, and still they won’t acknowledge the truth. No, I’m not talking about UFO’s and aliens, I’m referring to electric vehicle spontaneous battery fires. Beam me up Scotty, before I get fried.
At this rate, even politicians will start to notice.
Let’s hope so. They can be pretty dense/oblivious.
UFO — Unshippable Fireprone Object
Speaking of UFO’s, did anyone see the recent Congressional testimony about UFO’s?
One of the witnesses (David Grusch I think) testified under oath that the US govt was in possession of alien space vehicles and the alien “biologics” (as he called them) who were supposedly recovered from the crashed vehicles.
It was all very interesting to say the least.
I don’t know what the angle is, but that testimony has zero probability of being true. There are no alien craft and no alien “biologics,” period.
But Devon Archer was about to testify on Hunter Biden’s business dealings, so something was needed.
Yep,
Gotta look at what they’re trying to distract you from
I am with you, but when you see old Joe it does make you wonder….
Not really. He’s clearly a puppet. He tours with Jeff Dunham.
They are probably the remains of a pidgeon. Pidgeons were used in in some early experimental UAVs for terminal guidance. The pigeon beak was fitted with an electrode that would make contact with a conductive window and steer the UAV to target. The window showed the target. the pidgeon was trained to peck at the target. Birds have fast and acute vision.
That’s an alternative to Tom Lehrer’s approach.
Perhaps they were from “the few we take home to experiment”
Unidentified Frying Object 😀
Unpredictably Frying Object 😀
One solution: production and shipment of EVs without the batteries.
Batteries produced and mounted in the cars in country (or continent)
where the car is sold.
Not really possible. For example, in Bolt and Tesla the EV battery is so big it basically is the floorpan of the car. The car is assembled above and around it.
When the battery has worn out, is it possible to replace the battery?
For most cars, yes, the EV fuel tank can be replaced (usually after 10-20 years) at a cost of anywhere between $5,000 – $35,000 depending on
Battery Manufacturer
Car Make/Model
Range (fuel tank capacity)
Unclear if this is just the cost of the battery or if Installation Labor is included
$5000 is unrealistic low.
Probably the Prius or Leaf limited range battery
Can the car be shipped with a discharged battery?
This is irrelevant. The charge in the battery has nothing to do with the fire hazard. The electrolyte itself is flammable and the LOX is an oxidizer.
Doesn’t help the residual charge is enough to cause a failure.
And will will the batteries get to destination? It isn’t the seats or headlight that start fires.
Channel surfing today I chanced up on the PBS new hour, a segment on ‘climate anxiety’ and they spoke with a Leslie Davenport a psychologist dealing with such issues, pretty funny the whole thing, but I bet those affected by it don’t have any solar panels on the roof or make any sacrifices for the climate, they keep on using FF every day of course.
The push for electric cars is a farce. It is not solving any serious problem but creating many of it’s own. Let’s hope problems like this make our leaders take a serious look at the whole climate change hoax and not be blinded by the phony science being used to sell it.
Can they ship them strapped to the top deck, I.e. outside of the hull?
They are build as car carriers so are big enclosed boxes on a hull so no outside cargo
Hmmmm . . . interesting concept . . . EV batteries (under and outside the car bodies) subjected to wind- and sea-driven salt water exposure . . . what could possible go wrong with that?
Who would buy a car that had been exposed to salt water for the whole voyage? Even if the battery survived intact. If EV’s are carried in the future, it’ll most likely be as containers of disassembled parts, to be completed on arrival.
I do not think salt spray is good for cars, let alone new cars.
Corrosion issues aside, eV in particular, not good to expose to sea water.
Salt water is a major cause of fires in EVs.
How about putting them on ramps that that can jettison them into the ocean. Have remote releases on the ramp.
Or maybe just large insurance premium increases on all of us who couldn’t possibly afford such expensive automobiles. After all, BEV cars are a necessity and peasants are cheaper by the dozen.
Insurance premiums are already increasing in the UK, but of course it’s always “other factors” causing the increase. Brexit, Ukraine, lockdowns.. the usual suspects.
I got a charge out of reading this story, but it was shocking to read about the number of EVs that could be involved in the current fire. I don’t believe the MSM have unnecessarily amped up the coverage.
There’s really no, ahem, shortage of reasons for why an EV may have started the whole thing.
And there’s really no doubt that many will take a dim view of this event, as its not a good plug for EVs being safe in storage.
Oh do put a socket in it.
Watt ever you say.
Ohm gonna go now
…couldn’t resist
Guess I’ll have to re-order my Aventador.
For a turd time
I didn’t reply directly to AWG because I suspect the original comment might disappear.
Insurance fraud is a possibility, somebody died though so a homicide charge could result.
I wonder if anyone has run the statistics on lithium battery fires per million vehicle hours.
The insurance industry is very good at statistics and also hates to make big payouts. I’m guessing that the industry would know if the insurance companies have started an investigation.
I strongly doubt insurance fraud was a factor. The numbers of EV’s carried was a smaller fraction of the total, around 1/5th or 1/6th so where is the sense in destroying ICE cars just to take out a few hundred EV’s. Also many of those cars were high-end luxury models, so likely being shipped to customers who had paid in advance, rather than ‘on spec.’ For me, that whole line of enquiry into insurance fraud is a complete non-starter.
On the other hand, ‘something’ caused those EV batteries to detonate, I wonder if they looked at the crew’s handling of the ship?
The scary thing about lithium batteries is that they seem to go into thermal runaway just sitting there.
Not quite. Some of the cheap batteries built without safety features are ticking time bombs but, for the rest, ‘something’ is needed as a trigger – a slight knock or damage, maybe. The scary thing is where you have loads of EV’s close together the heat of one thermal runaway will cause others to do the same in a kind of chain reaction.
I wonder, they must ship the EV cars with batts fully charged so to drive them on to the ship, maybe ship them with batts dead so no fire hazard and then charge them at dealership?
Would love to see a hockey stick chart of the number of EV fires on ships over time. UP AND UP!
Fully discharging lithium-ion batteries of the type used in EVs to the point they produce low, non-dangerous voltage—say, below 50 vdc—will greatly shorten their subsequent cycle life, if not ruin them outright.
Do they manufacture batteries already fully charged? I know that’s true for zinc-graphite batteries, but these are not rechargeable.
From https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/9f78ve/when_batteries_are_made_are_they_already_charged/ :
“I’m a mechanical engineer who spent some time working in a lithium ion battery research lab. Manufacturing experimental Li-ion batteries was one of my main day to day tasks . . .
“A Li-ion battery anode is manufactured by putting a coating of graphite (combined with a binder and maybe some performance increasing additives) onto a sheet of copper foil. The anode contains no lithium when manufactured.
“The cathode is manufactured by putting a coating of lithium containing material (again in combination with a binder and additives) onto a sheet of aluminum foil. This material is commonly known as cathode active material (CAM), and for some examples of the chemistry you can look up LCO and NMC.
“Because the cathode is lithiated at manufacture and the anode is not, the battery will have some charge when it is first assembled.“
(my bold emphasis added)
Also, with respect to my previous post, please note that I was referring to Li-ion battery pack voltage being below 50 vdc, and not intending that be applicable to the voltage on an individual battery cell’s voltage. For example, the 2170 form factor individual battery cells used in current Tesla EV’s have a design voltage of about 4 vdc at full charge, whereas the battery pack voltage is nominally 350 vdc (400 vdc max).
How many times do I have to say this? The charge in the battery, or lack thereof, IS NOT RELEVANT TO THE FIRE HAZARD, and anybody who thinks it is needs to stop commenting on a science blog until he figures out what the tarnation he’s talking about. The electrolyte is flammable and the LOX is an oxidizer, and all it takes is contact with air or water to start the fire. It has nothing, nothing to do with the charge.
Calm down dear, you’ll do yourself a mischief!
No charge —> no possibility of an electrical short (internal or external) leading to melting leading to battery case breach leading to outbreak of fire.
Breach of hermetically-sealed battery pack case —> yeah, theoretically possible but nowhere near as likely as an electrical short and, depending on the size of the leak, it is problematic that chemical reaction of air with a battery cell electrolyte will lead to fire outbreak as opposed to say, just heat generation.
Also, LOX??? I don’t see that J Boles made any reference to such.
EV’s cannot be pushed or towed when the battery is flat, when they break down on the road they have to be lifted onto the back of a flatbed truck. Not an efficient way of unloading a ferry.
EV scooters and bikes are becoming more popular and people in urban areas may bring the battery up to their apartment to recharge over night….and I have read about a fire from one of these cases.
E scooters
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ka2hMktqoCY
E bikes (especially violent)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRPW8zN_c0E
E Cigs
Well, if you don’t want to go through cancer I guess an exploding cigarette will provide a quicker death!
Not very considerate of those in the vicinity, however…
Wow, another one!
When I saw this story recently, I just assumed it was a recycled story form a few years ago.
Politician X to politician XXX:
“We’ll just ban the sale of all cars except electric ones. What could go wrong?”
The law of unintended consequences bites back!
Didn’t the Democrats pass a bill revoking the law of unintended consequences?
Yes, right after passing another bill revoking the laws of physics.
If I’m waiting at a bus stop and a battery-electric bus shows up, I don’t get on; I just wait for the next bus and hope it’s a diesel. Accidents happen and I’m old enough that I don’t mind dying, but there surely aren’t many worse ways to die than in an EV fire on a crowded bus.
It has to happen sooner or later; let’s just hope it causes our lords and masters to think again.
quote:“Batteries for e-bikes should be regulated in the same way as fireworks, heavy machinery or medical devices because of the fire risk they pose, a charity has said.
BBC (4days ago)
They’re talking about the little scooters = the ones like children’s scooters which have tiny wheels and you stand up on them.
They say that because the design of those with the battery slung underneath and close to the ground, the battery gets damaged easily.
e.g. By riding over kerbs
Then when it’s being charged, the damage manifests by overheatings, burnings and explodings.
But electric cars are hardly any different from the scooters. Their batteries are slung underneath and close to the road and they get ridden/driven over kerbs, pot-holes, crappy road repairs, speed humps, sleeping policeman, old folks, wheelchairs, zimmer frames and pushchairs – much more so than a little scooter would or does.
I’ve just sussed it haven’t I?
It’s the Roll-On Roll-Off ferries themselves
Others will have more experience of those things than I do but on the few occasions I have driven on/off a RoRo – the jolt you get on the ramp where ‘ship meets land’ is was always horrendous.
Because of the movement of water/waves/wind and tide, it always will be.
So if the ship moves at the instant that car is being ridden over the ramp, that huge and very hard metal plate is going to disembowel the car.
Especially EVs are they are always so ‘low slung’ – their ground clearance is the minimum that manufacturers can get away with.
There is the reason that EVs on RoRo ferries are catching fire – its the very design of the loading ramp – smashing a lump out of the battery as the cars ‘roll’ onboard
Add to that a ‘couldn’t care less‘ attitude by low-paid probably migrant employees driving the things on/off – exacerbated by the pressure they’ll be under ‘not to hang about‘
Plus the sheer propensity for Lithium Ion to burn. Nothing else could happen and it signifies how EVs are ‘going to age’ when large numbers of them do ‘hit the road’
haha. Literally.
Because it is ‘hitting the road’ that is igniting the little scooters.
edit to add:
I should have but didn’t bookmark the story BUT, this thing is gonna get massively worse if Elon has his way with his latest brainwave.
Instead of the battery being a separate element hung from a solid chassis, Elon wants to build ‘Electric Monocoques‘
He’s looking to have the battery be an integral part of the fenders, bumpers, wings and sills.
That is going to be such a disaster in the making.
Those parts are intended to absorb bumps and jolts and minor crashes – Lithium Ion batteries are not and never will be able to.