Buying a car to import a car, especially according to the order production is a very difficult thing, because from the payment of the deposit to the car collection period may have to wait 3-6 months, and when the new car is delivered to the hand, its factory time also reaches 3-6 months, in the eyes of others, this already belongs to the inventory car... In addition to the difficulty, but also to worry about accidents in the transport of new cars, in 2019 alone, at least 6 car transport ship accidents, including many serious accidents in which the entire ship loaded thousands of vehicles were reimbursed at one time.
"Your Bentley has been shipped, your Bentley has burned"
According to foreign media reports, on February 17, the Panamanian "Felicity Ace", which departed from Germany, was ready to transport 3965 Volkswagen Group brand cars to the United States. There are 3,965 Volkswagen brand cars on board: in addition to a large number of new Golf GTIs, Golf R, ID.4 and Audi brands, there are 1100 Porsches and 189 Bentleys, as well as a small number of Lamborghinis.
According to estimates, the value of new cars on board is about 1,6 billion, of which Bentley cars alone are worth more than 30 million. According to the news of foreign news agencies, some port people said that the cause of the fire of the freighter was caused by the fire of the lithium battery of the electric vehicle on the ship, due to the particularity of the lithium battery, once the fire needs professional equipment to be extinguished, ordinary consumer equipment is almost powerless.
At present, there is no open flame on the freighter, but it is still smoking, which shows that the interior of the cabin is still burning. The crew has been relocated to land, and the vans will be towed to other ports for further processing. Now, the owner of the ship's cargo can only pray that the fire has not affected his car.
The car burned on the road, who counted it?
Transport car cargo ship fire although it is an accident, but the goods burned after the total compensation, for the cargo transport company, thousands of vehicles of compensation amount is not a small amount, not to mention the value of the transport model is not cheap, in order to reduce the transport risk, the transport car Ro-Ro ship will be insured for the goods, that is to say, the accident in the transport is compensated by the insurance company, then how big is the compensation for similar ro-ro ship accidents?
In 2019, the South Korean giant car transport ship "Kim Kwang" capsized in Georgia, the United States, the 199-meter-long ship carrying 4200 vehicles, with the RoRo capsizing 4200 vehicles all reimbursed, it can be said that this is the most serious ro-ro shipping accident in recent years, and this accident also caused the insurance companies to bleed heavily.
According to the price of the goods, the 4,200 vehicles transported by the "Golden Light" are worth 204 million US dollars, which is equivalent to a one-time loss of 1.3 billion yuan, and this does not include the loss of the cargo ship itself. Returning to the "Felicity Ace" that caught fire in this crash, although the number of cars loaded was only more than one-third of the "Golden Light", most of the transportation was expensive high-end cars, and the loss was no less than that of the "Golden Light".
According to the experience of previous accidents, generally small fires can be extinguished in time, such as the "Platinum Ray" transport ship in Ulsan, South Korea in 2019, fortunately, the fire was extinguished in time, and finally only 61 cars were damaged, and the economic loss was not large. The "Felicity Ace" that occurred in this fire is obviously out of control, in which case either the fire will engulf all vehicles, or the fire will cause the sinking of the freighter, in short, the luxury car on the ship will not escape.
Why are car transport ships frequently involved
Maritime transport ships are generally loaded with containers, but the cargo ship transporting cars does not use containers, commodity vehicles drive directly from the dock into the cabin, so that the speed of loading and unloading the car is faster than the container, the ro-ro ship of the transport car is like a landing ship, in order to improve the loading capacity, the car is parked very tightly in the cabin, and now the latest ro-ro ship can load 8,000 vehicles at a time, and the loading capacity is amazing!
Because the cabin is very crowded and the temperature is high, once there are automotive electronic components spontaneous combustion, the fire will spread rapidly, so the greater the load capacity of a ship, the greater the risk, the general car combustion will produce smoke, we can imagine how difficult it is to rely on people to extinguish the fire in the case of thick smoke in the cabin, in addition, in the cabin with large water flood irrigation to extinguish the fire may lead to the hull imbalance overturning, so the fire has become the most common and most difficult to deal with the accident of the ro-ro ship.
Compared with fires, the accidents of overturning of ro-ro ships are relatively small, and most of the overturning of general transport ships is caused by misoperation, such as the capsizing of the South Korean car transport ship "Kim Kwang", because the first mate on board miscalculated when calculating the weight of the cargo in the cabin, and there was not enough water under the deck to ballast the cabin, which eventually led to the capsizing of the ro-ro ship.
Write at the end
At present, import and export cars are basically based on shipping, automobile manufacturers first send the produced good cars to the wharf through the road or railway, and then transport them to the destination wharf to unload the goods after loading the ship at the wharf, and then transport them to the dealer's warehouse through the passage and railway, so the transportation of imported cars is actually very troublesome, but after the opening of the domestic China-Europe train, the imported cars can go directly to the destination through the railway, so as to save time and money, of course, the safety of railway transportation is also better.
New energy car owners scan the code to receive free car wash