Out Of Control Burning Ship Full Of EVs
By Paul Homewood
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While the ship full of EVs continues to burn out of control, deniers still try to protest that EVs are not to blame.
Naturally it is far too early to know for certain exactly what caused the fire, the fact that battery fires quickly burn totally out of control is well established. It was this that created the catastrophe on the Freemantle Highway earlier this week.
But it is utterly irrelevant exactly what started the fire. What is relevant is the fact that a ship full of EVs quickly becomes an inferno when a fire starts. A car ferry full of EVs, as opposed to a cargo ship like this, would quickly become a death trap once even a tiny fire had taken hold.
If our denier friends still refuse to accept the facts, maybe they should take a look at this video:
https://www.facebook.com/watch?v=463337322660800
Fancy taking the Hull to Zeebrugge ferry full of EVs?
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Shipping companies and/or their insurers surely won’t want to take these risks indefinitely.
The Zeebrugge ferry developed an excellent fire extinguishing technique some time ago
With lithium ion battery, i.e., EV, fires, the only technique that will extinguish them quickly is sinking the ship.
They burn for days. No matter how much water or foam or what have you is poured over them.
Money is going to stand up and say, “No.”
Starting with the insurance industry, followed by the shipping industry. Then, unions like the MM&P and IBU (in the U.S.), people will refuse to RISK their money on EV’s.
Market share by fiat can only gin up so much taxpayer funding…
DIE, ELECTRIC VEHICLES*, DIE! (Bwah, ha, ha, ha, haaaaaaaa!)
*Unless 100% of costs of production and purchase and maintenance, etc. are covered by private money AND there are safety regulations to protect the public (e.g., no parking in public parking garages).
Was that the “Herald of Free Enterprise”??????
Exactly
Norway has banned EV’s on its car ferries. If Lloyds have anything to do with it and they refuse to pay out ship insurance, the rest will follow suit. So how will EV’s get from China to Europe? Be careful which train you catch…
THIS Norway?
“This is the Norway – nation hits record EV share in 2022 on its way to ending gas car sales”
Yes, it’s one ferry company.
Norway heavily incentivises EV purchases & heavily penalises ICE sales.
https://blog.wallbox.com/how-norway-became-a-global-ev-leader/
“Let’s take a look at the Volkswagen Golf versus the Volkswagen e-Golf as an example of how the tax scheme works in practice. According to the official price list of Volkswagen in Norway, a Golf costs €36.600 (397.600 Norwegian Krone), while the e-Golf is available for just €25.300 (274.900 Norwegian Krone), as it comes without import tax, emission fees or 25% VAT. Buying the electric model in Norway is often good for your eco-conscience as well as your wallet.”
Norway heavily subsidises EV s using their oil revenues to pay the subsidy. That oil is burnt somewhere else so the whole scheme does Sweet Fanny. Adams for global CO2
ironically the best way to deal with this risk is to enclose the EVs in a CO2 blanket.
CO2 extinguishing relies on excluding oxygen from the fire. That does not work when the fire provides its own oxygen and heat.
Learn some godamn chemistry. Doesn’t work.
Or how about sitting in your EV on Le Shuttle through the Chunnel?
On Eurotunnel etc. they should segregate batteries to the back of the train with a remote decoupling
On reflection they won’t do decoupling because they want to drag the fire through the tunnel as fast as possible to avoid damaging the tunnel
recently did the trip, asked the freight opo… do you allow EVs on.? … Oh yes why?
BEVs are going to get banned from ferries, multi storey car parks very soon, another negative in the electric car cult.
Bloody good job, then (perhaps) their owners will get to know how it feels to encounter more & more restrictions on where I can use my ICE vehicle.
But why do you write “utterly irrelevant”? Surely a fire starting in an EV battery is more damning than one spreading to it from elsewhere.
Because conventional fire suppressant methods on board a ship are sufficient to deal with petrol/diesel fires.
Nothing can suppress an EV fire. Even if the ship sank they would still burn.
We all know that; but that doesn’t make it “utterly irrelevant”. I maintain that it looks worse for EV’s if the fire turns out to have started in an EV battery. And that makes it relevant.
What are the odds for an EV fire in the Eurotunnel or X channel ferries sometime in the next year or two ?
Getting worried now. Travelling by Eurotunnel this week and then back on the ferry in a couple of weeks.
There are escape tunnels running alongside the main tunnel. I presume they have their own ventilation source. Any fire in the tunnel is problematic so, in the unlikely event of a fire, get to an escape exit as quickly as you can. Its very rare though.
Thank you Mad Mike. Slightly off topic, but we are going to see our daughter in Switzerland then on to Italy. When we were organising the holiday she asked us if we were sure we wanted to go in August as it would be very hot – we said we would be fine. When I spoke to her last week she was cold.
I always use the ferries when I go to the UK with my car. I never did see the point of a tunnel that you cannot drive through yourself.
>>Travelling by Eurotunnel this week and then back on the ferry in a couple of weeks.
The tunnel is quicker and environmentally better
Is it too late to invest in some breathing apparatus? Just heard that 2 Aussie firemen that inhaled cobalt fumes from a battery car fire have been invalided out of the service as a result of the damage.
Gezza1298 – Probably.
The Channel tunnel is great, but potentially dragging a burning carriage through its length isn’t great.
The vast majority of EV’s are by definition, new. Quite how they will behave when they have potentially damaged battery cells through repeated fast charging or incorrect charging methods is another matter.
Whether the Channel Tunnel, long alpine tunnels, Ferries, multi storey car parks or underground residential parking, sooner or later new regulations will need to be put in place and fire fighters will need additional dedicated equipment.
Due to the ferocious nature of the fires I can’t imagine what sort of equipment that could be.
Time to look for ferry companies that specifically ban EVs from all passenger car ferries (mixture of cars, trucks and foot passengers) and those that are trucks only.
A quotation from the Fire Industry Association:
“Lithium-ion batteries can develop into significant and unstoppable thermal runaway fires …”
Unstoppable. So, as I understand it, you spray lots of water to try to keep the surroundings cool in hopes that the fire won’t spread, and you let the existing fire burn itself out.
Open to correction of course.
The first one on the video has been exposed as a fake, cut down video of fire in Russia caused by two non ev trucks, but not the rest
I was struck by the prodigious amounts of toxic fumes each of them put out. That, alone will sicken and kill many people.
It also appeared that there was little time to escape. Having been hit with hot shrapnel I can tell you that is no fun.
Paul,
You have to watch this guy.
The Dutch Oven
Runaway 500 EV meltdown on cargo ship: Proof our cities aren’t ready for full EV deployment
Thanks for posting that. A brilliant summary of the situation.
Only an Ozzie can tell it like it really is.
It’s not only cities. The entire country is not ready for vehicles with pathetic ranges and long recharge times.
>>Proof our cities aren’t ready for full EV deployment
In the states, they are now pushing the vehicle into an open top container and filling it with wet sand. 3 days later the fire is out.
Where is this second ship? I knew about Freemantle Highway.
The answer to your question is, “No. I don’t even want one aboard. All electric vehicles should be banned from ferries and tunnels”.
Very off topic but really worth reposting here, Paul: Willis has a great piece about: ” The IPCC Says No Climate Crisis” in his article at:
It’s worth reading just for the formula IPCC use to calculate ‘high temps. It also explains the difference between AR reports and the SPM (As if we didn’t know).
500 destroyed, best place for them?
The fires and speed of spread were truly frightening. I didn’t realise they could explode. I don’t think I would be too happy having an EV on charge in my garage overnight while I slept.
Yet local authorities, under National Grid and eco-loon pressure, are proposing to put banks of these batteries close to houses in BESS systems. The lunatics have not only taken over the asylum…….
There is a voice record of an emergency call from the ship that identifies it as having started in a battery car. And just how bad was it that the best option for some of the crew was to jump overboard? Among the now 500 battery cars on board perhaps there was a Mercedes as they don’t seem to be doing to well with batteries. A woman in the US was loaned a battery Mercedes while her normal car was in the shop. She parked it in her garage – unconnected – and it ignited to burn her house down. Heed the Chevrolet advice to park at least 50 feet from something you value. Of course, you could end up burning down something somebody else values….
There are some interesting numbers that show a steady rise in ship fires that could well correlate with an increase in lithium batteries being shipped excluding cars. Time for somebody to do some inconvenient research.
Does anyone know the cause of the fire in a Liverpool centre multi story carpark a couple or three years ago? It burned and burned for days, the firemen chappies couldn’t approach anywhere near the blaze. The whole floor of cars were destroyed, including eventually the whole car park. Just wondering, was it the fore runner of things to come?
A few months ago up here on the outskirts of Preston, a Jaguar Land Rover newly opened sales room was destroyed including goodness knows how many vehicles due to an overnight fire. Rumour has it it was a leccy vehicle…
It seems to me that these fires have sealed the fate of electric cars. The insurance companies simply will not cover them.
Insurance companies EXIST to cover rare but serious risks.
…at a price!
Only the rich will have lekkycars anyway
But the premiums will be astronomical and in any case EV fires are hardly “rare”. Look at the number that spontaneously burst into flames while stationary whether recharging or not.
>>Insurance companies EXIST to cover rare but serious risks.
What percentage of battycars go flameyoops each year?
1% or less easy-peasy insuribobble
I’ve just returned on a car ferry from Gothenburg to Frederikshavn on my to and from Norway. Our petrol-driven VW was in a distinct minority. There was so much lovely fresh water, energy, money and dramatic scenery in Norway where EVs dominate the roads
Of course, Norway is also Europe’s largest per capita CO2 generators, even if the CO2 emissions are actually emitted in the countries to which Norway exports its oil, gas and petroleum products.
There are ceratinly plenty of EVs on the ferries connecting Denmark with various points in Sweden and Norway. But I was completely unaware of any concerns about EV fires or explosions on any of the many ferry routes we could have taken.
Paul, are there any reliable data for the numbers of EV fires in this “green” corner of our World?
Five Hundred EVs traveling in salt-spray–what could go wrong?