The Electric: A New Concern for EVs: Fires Aboard Transport Ships
Shipping companies have urged international maritime regulators to create safety rules for transporting electric vehicles after a spate of fires aboard freighters carrying EVs, including one last week near the Netherlands that killed a crew member and injured seven others.
In the latest accident, the 650-foot Fremantle Highway caught fire July 26 en route from Bremerhaven, Germany, to Singapore with 3,783 vehicles aboard, including 498 EVs. It took until Sunday for the fire and smoke to subside sufficiently for tugboats to pull the freighter out of shipping lanes. Authorities do not know how the fire started, but shipping operators “are calling for acceleration [of new regulations] after this new incident,” Nathan Habers, spokesperson for the Royal Association of Netherlands Shipowners, told me in a message.
Shipowners are concerned because the fire was the fifth involving a ship carrying EVs since 2018. Last year, a ship called the Felicity Ace went down in the Atlantic while transporting some 4,000 vehicles made by Audi, Bentley, Lamborghini, Porsche and Volkswagen, including some EVs. Norwegian freighter operator Havila Kystruten responded by saying it would no longer ship EVs, and Mitsui OSK Lines, the owner of 110 car transporters, said it would no longer ship used EVs. Mitsui said older batteries are typically in poorer condition than those in new vehicles.
Whether or not EV batteries are at fault in any of the incidents, they can make a fire more intense because of the high temperatures at which they burn, reaching as much as 2,700 degrees Celsius (4,892 Fahrenheit), more than twice as hot as a gasoline fire. A lithium-ion battery can catch fire from a short circuit; because of the flammability of the electrolyte, the short-circuited cell will ignite neighboring cells and the entire battery in a chain reaction called thermal runaway. In June, for instance, four people were killed in New York when fire broke out in an e-bike shop and spread through apartments in the building. But fire on car-carrying ships is particularly problematic because the vehicles are parked just inches apart, with up to 13 low-ceilinged decks, making the blaze almost impossible to contain.
International regulations cover the shipment of gasoline-powered combustion vehicles, but the International Maritime Organization, the U.N. body that regulates global shipping, currently has only voluntary guidelines for the transportation of EVs or lithium-ion batteries, spokesperson Natasha Brown told me. In March, an IMO subcommittee is scheduled to consider a proposal by China to either tighten the guidelines or establish mandatory EV shipping regulations. In the proposal, China said that when researchers extinguished lithium-ion fires in tests, the EVs reignited, feeding a gas explosion. The document explained that thermal runaway generates gas, which the flames from the battery then ignite.
Among proposals are better segregation of EVs from each other and the development of new fire-fighting chemicals. A key issue is how much charge is permitted in the EV batteries while they are shipped, because that feeds a fire. The international maritime guidelines recommend no more than a 30% state of charge. When you buy a new EV, it is often delivered to you fully charged. But Jeff Dahn, a leading battery scientist who advises Tesla, recommended limiting shipped EVs to a 10% charge, which he said “would be safe under almost all conditions, I believe.”