Should Shipping Companies Continue To Transport EV’s?

Written by PSI editor on August 7, 2023. Posted in Current News

With a second large vessel carrying EV’s destroyed by apparent battery fire, perhaps it is time for shipping companies to re-think whether they wish to risk their ships in this way

Two articles were recently published which examine this question, both published by the website GCaptain on July 27th.

The first reads:

The fire on the car carrier Fremantle Highway (pictured) in the North Sea is just the latest in a long and ever-growing list of fires involving vehicles on roll-on/roll-off (RoRo) vessels.

As we have reported, the Panama-flagged ship caught fire just before midnight on Tuesday after departing Bremerhaven, Germany on a voyage to Port Said, Egypt. All crew members abandoned ship or were rescued by helicopter.

Sadly, one crew member has died and several sustained injuries.

The ship’s charterer, “K” Line, reported there were 3,783 total cars on board, including 498 electric vehicles, which is far more than the 2,857 units and 25 electric vehicles initially reported.

As of now the cause of the fire is unknown, but there are reports that the fire “started in the battery of an electric car”, according to a recording of a radio transmission released by Dutch broadcaster RTL.

As the response continues, the incident recalls several previous fires involving stowed vehicles on roll-on/roll-off ships in recent years.

The burned-out Freemantle Highway was towed to Amsterdam for salvage, arriving on August 3rd.

The Panama-flagged Felicity Ace (pictured below), operated by Mitsui O.S.K. Lines (MOL), caught fire on February 16 2022, approximately 90 nautical miles southwest of the Azores as the ship was underway from Embden, Germany to the U.S. East Coast.

All 22 crew members abandoned ship safely.

Image: The Guardian

The ship was reportedly carrying some 4,000 vehicles, including some electric vehicles and luxury brands like Porsches, Bentleys, and Lamborghinis, along with VW and Audis. The fire continued to burned until the ship sank about two weeks later on March 1, 2022.

The Panama Maritime Authority’s investigation report into the incident was submitted to the IMO in May but is not yet publicly available.

Conclusion

While it’s difficult to draw conclusions about the Fremantle Highway fire and others from previous incidents, a look back at similar incidents does provide some insight and background about the dangers associated with transportation of new and used vehicles on roll-on/roll-off ships.

With the growing popularity (?) of electric vehicles, it will be interesting to see how or if rules and regulations evolve to meet new challenges associated with transporting them by ship.

See the article here gcaptain.com

The second article reads:

Electric vehicles are crisscrossing the globe to reach buyers, but the battery technology involved is exposing under-prepared maritime shippers to the risk of hard-to-control fires, industry, insurance and emergency response officials said.

That risk has been put under the spotlight by the burning car carrier drifting off the Dutch coast. The Dutchcoastguard said the fire’s cause was unknown, but Dutch broadcaster RTL released a recording in which an emergency responder is heard saying “the fire started in the battery of an electric car.”

While all logistics companies deal with the risk of EV lithium-ion batteries burning with twice the energy of a normal fire, the maritime industry hasn’t kept up with the developing technology and how it creates greater risk, maritime officials and insurers said.

There were 209 ship fires reported during 2022, the highest number in a decade and 17 percent more than in 2021, according to a report from insurer Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty (AGCS) ALVG.DE. Of that total, 13 occurred on car carriers, but how many involved EVs was not available.

The European Maritime Safety Agency said in a March report the main cargo types identified as responsible for “a large share of cargo fire accidents included … lithium-ion batteries.”

Japan’s Shoei Kisen, which owns the Freemantle Highway, said it was working with authorities to get control of the fire.

The cause of the fire, while still officially undetermined, has raised questions about “what blind spots there are when transporting electric cars powered by batteries – which when they catch fire can’t be extinguished with water, or even by oxygen deprivation,” said Nathan Habers, spokesperson for the Royal Association of Netherlands Shipowners (KVNR).

“The first question that comes to mind is: Does the current code stack up against the risk profile of this type of goods?” he added.

One hazard in lithium-ion batteries is “thermal runaway,” a rapid and unstoppable increase in temperature that leads to fires in EVs that are hard to extinguish and can spontaneously reignite.

Fire extinguishing systems on the massive ships that haul cars weren’t designed for those hotter fires, and shipping companies and regulators are scrambling to catch up, said Douglas Dillon, executive director of the Tri-state Maritime Safety Association that covers Delaware, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Recent fire-related losses are resulting in increased insurance costs for automakers shipping cargo and costs are likely to increase for vessel owners as well, said John Frazee, a managing director at insurance broker Marsh.

As ship owners seek to limit losses by legally pursuing automakers whose vehicles are determined to have caused a fire, automakers are buying additional liability protection, he said.

Exacerbating the risks is the business model used by the companies that includes tightly packed ships. Auto carriers like the burning ship are known as RoRos, which stands for roll-on/roll-off – the way cars are loaded and unloaded.

RoRos are like floating parking garages and can have a dozen or more decks carrying thousands of vehicles, industry officials said. Unlike parking lots, however, cars are parked bumper-to-bumper with as little as a foot or two of space overhead.

Firemen typically put out EV battery fires on roadsides by clearing the area around the burning vehicle and flooding the underside with water, something difficult to do on a RoRo, Dillon said.

“There’s no way for a firefighter in protective gear to get to the location of a fire” on a ship, he said, adding the cramped conditions increase the danger getting trapped.

While trains and trucks also transport EVs, isolating and extinguishing fires is easier as workers can unhook a rail car and a trucker can pull over, said Frazee.

Frazee expects insurers to lead the charge on strengthening safety systems on ships. Options being worked on include new chemicals to douse flames, specialized EV fire blankets, battery piercing fire hose nozzles and proposals to segregate EVs.

“I see no quick solution,” Frazee said.

The International Maritime Organization, which sets regulations for safety at sea, plans to evaluate new measures next year for ships transporting EVs in light of the growing number of fires on cargo ships, a spokesperson told Reuters.

That could include specifications on types of water extinguishers available on boats and limitations on the amount a battery can be charged, which impacts flammability.

With EVs here to stay, KVNR’s Habers said his group is discussing tightening regulations to account for the additional safety risks.

“There is already a whole lot of communication underway about this,” he said, “but with this incident it becomes apparent we might need to speed up the process, especially when you consider that the number of this sort of cars is only going to rise.”

Global auto sales last year totaled 81 million vehicles, 9.5 percent of which were EVs, according to EV-Volumes.com. China and Europe have been the most aggressive regions in pushing automakers to shift to EVs, and U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration has proposed rules that could result in as much as two-thirds of the new vehicle market shifting to EVs by 2032.

With the costs of EV’s already very high, any new measures having to be taken by shipping companies to protect their vessels will be passed along, and end up being added to the prices people pay for their little piece of virtue-signalling.

See the article here gcaptain.com

Header image: Netherlands Coast Guard

Bold emphasis added

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