A fire in the Atlantic Ocean lasted for 6 days, burning a $400 million luxury car and a multi-million dollar freighter. Fortunately, there were no casualties, and all 22 crew members were rescued. And how will this accident affect the industry? The world is vigorously promoting the transformation of electrification, in view of the characteristics of electric vehicles once the traditional method of fire is difficult to extinguish, is the logistics and urban infrastructure such as ocean-going cargo ships and parking lots ready to undertake everything?
Wen 丨 wisdom driving network Huang Huadan
A cargo ship laden with Volkswagen and its sub-brand cars caught fire in the Atlantic Ocean, causing widespread concern.
According to the Associated Press, on February 22, local time, a Portuguese Navy official said that the fire of the freighter that had been burning on the Atlantic For 6 days had finally subsided, or it would be towed to the Bahamas.
On 21 February, two large tugboats equipped with firefighting equipment arrived at the scene from Gibraltar and, along with patrol boats, sprayed water on board, and the initial salvage team was already at the scene to cool the boat.
▲ Photo released by the Portuguese Navy
Two more tugboats will arrive on 23 and 26 February.
The open flames were no longer visible on Tuesday, and according to Joao Mendes Cabe as, captain of the port of Hortas, a rescue team may be on board wednesday to tug the boat.
At this point, the freighter, which has been burning at sea for many days, may finally be able to return home.
▲ Deck before the fire
Industry estimates suggest that the Felicity Ace itself, as well as the approximately $400 million worth of vehicles loaded on board, could be completely damaged.
On February 16, Felicity Ace sent a distress signal near the Portuguese Azores.
According to Captain Cabe as, the fire initially started from the cargo deck where the vehicle was loaded, but when the alarm sounded, the smoke was too large to distinguish the exact point of ignition.
The specific cause of the fire is not yet known, but there is no shortage of speculation about whether the lithium ion of electric vehicles caused the fire.
"The captain of [felicity Ace] told us that there are a lot of electric cars on board, and of course there are many non-electric cars." Cabe as Captain said.
On the same day, with the assistance of merchant ships and the Portuguese Air Force near the sea, 22 crew members were rescued and sent to the Portuguese island of Faial.
The cargo ship was too large to be extinguished for a while, and the hull was huge and could not be dragged into the port, and could only be allowed to drift and burn at sea.
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Busy sea freight
Built in 2005, FelicityAce is 200 meters long, 31.7 meters wide and has a carrying capacity of 17,738 tons.
The large 16-year-old freighter, which is part of the Snowscape Car Carriers SA of The Japanese shipping company MitsuuiOSK Lines (MOL), carries the Panamanian flag. Departed from the Port of Emden in Germany on February 10 and was scheduled to arrive at port Davisville on Rhode Island, USA on February 23.
Bloomberg quoted an earlier internal email from Volkswagen USA as saying that the freighter carried a total of 3,965 new Volkswagen group cars such as Volkswagen, Audi, Lamborghini, Porsche and Bugatti. These include 1,100 Porsches, 189 Bentleys, as well as models such as the Audi, Lamborghini and Volkswagen ID.4. Audi also confirmed that some of the vehicles were on board, but did not specify the number.
According to David Preston, a spokesman for Quonset Development Corporation, 1,582 of them went to the terminal port of Davisville, and the brands included Volkswagen, Audi, Porsche and Bentley. The remaining vehicles are planned to be shipped to other ports in the United States.
In addition to Davisville, New Jersey, Baltimore and Georgia are also large vehicle import terminals.
According to the Provisionence Journal, more than 200,000 vehicles are transported each year to Davisville on a large freighter like the FelicityAce, and then distributed to dealers throughout the northeastern United States.
▲ The 2019 Primrose Ace is unloading.
After the incident, several owners who had booked Porsche and should have received the new car in the near future spoke out on social networking sites to mourn their unfortunate car in the fire.
Journalist and host Matt Farah, for example, has a 2022 Porsche Boxster Spyder waiting to be delivered, and he has gotten news from the dealer about the condition of his car.
"The dealer confirmed that my car and at least 12 of their other cars were on that ship," Farah said. "They didn't tell me more than to confirm that my car was on board. They said they would share these plans with me if there was any follow-up progress from Porsche North America. ”
As for whether the fire will affect the car market, it is undoubtedly not good news for the car market that has difficulties in delivery due to the epidemic and chip shortages.
At the Porsche China 2022 media briefing held on February 21, Zhichao jun also asked whether the fire would cause delivery problems.
Porsche's official reply said: "The vehicles transported by ships are mainly in the North American market, so there is no impact on Chinese users, but due to the chip and the reasons of the epidemic, Porsche is also completing the delivery of new cars for previous Chinese users as soon as possible." ”
This is not the first time an accident has occurred on a maritime cargo ship.
In March 2019, a freighter called "Grande America" full of cars and containers caught fire in the Bay of Biscay, southwest of Fenistel Penmarch in France, en route from Hamburg, Germany, to Casablanca, Morocco, and subsequently, due to the tilt of the hull, the GrandeAmerica overturned, and more than 2,000 luxury vehicles, including Audi and Porsche, sank to the bottom of the sea. Fortunately, all 27 people on board were rescued.
According to Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty (AGCS), while shipping losses have fallen by 50% over the past decade, on-board fires remain one of the biggest safety concerns and have actually increased significantly in recent years.
Over the past decade, AGCS has identified fires as the third leading cause of shipping losses, with fires leading to total losses reaching a 10-year four-year high at the end of 2020.
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Loss and Insurance
According to russell Group analysis, the cars and vans aboard the Felicity Ace are worth $401 million, and the total value of the ship, including the ship, is estimated at $438 million.
In addition, software company Skytek also released a report saying that Felicity Ace has an estimated market capitalization of $24.5 million, while the total value of 3965 cars may exceed $500 million.
According to the Us Drive News Network, the Bentley car on board alone is worth more than $30 million.
Regarding the loss of Volkswagen Group, an American economist named Patrick Anderson estimated that the loss of Volkswagen Group in the accident may reach 282 million US dollars (about 1.78 billion yuan).
"We can't make a good assessment of the extent of damage to the cargo through any inspection, but fire, water, smoke and soaking water can all cause damage to these overlapping vehicles."
"These amounts do not include downstream losses for dealers. Nor does it include any salvage, environmental remediation and other costs, nor does it include the loss of wages for the ship itself and its crew, as well as the cost of rescuing their Portuguese. ”
A Volkswagen Group spokesperson said the company was aware of the accident, but it was not yet clear what the accident caused, and volkswagen group was working with local authorities and shipping companies to investigate the cause of the accident.
FelicityAce's current underwriting company is Britannia P&I Club. If the fire is determined to be the responsibility of the shipowner, most of the costs will fall on the insurance company, including the hull itself and the vehicle on board, as well as the cost of rescue. But according to TradeWinds, more than $10 million in claims will be paid through the International P&I consortium.
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Why did the fire burn for so long?
Why did this fire burn on the surface of the sea for 6 days?
The cause of the fire has not yet been announced, and it is not clear whether it was caused by electric vehicles. However, the difficulty of extinguishing fires due to the combustion of lithium-ion batteries in electric vehicles is a reason that has been made clear by all parties.
London-based law firm Watson Farley & Williams said in a recent report that while it was unclear whether electric cars were more likely to catch fire than internal combustion engine cars, it was widely believed that their consequences could be more catastrophic and more difficult to deal with.
The law firm said:
"If the crew on board doesn't know that different methods are needed to extinguish electric vehicle fires than traditional car fires, then the result of total damage to this accident is inevitable." There is evidence that the current fire extinguishing and cooling (due to the dangerous embarkation, only the external cooling of the hull structure can be used to extinguish the fire.) At the same time, it is not possible to use water directly, because it will increase the weight of the hull and weaken the stability of the ship. The equipment is not enough to deal with the new risks. ”
In 2019, Zhi Driving Jun wrote an article "What should I do if an electric car suddenly catches fire?" Don't be delusional except to run away! Battery expert: The on-board fire extinguisher cannot extinguish the battery fire.
At that time, Mr. Cao Guangping, an independent researcher of new energy vehicles, was interviewed by Zhichaojun, and he explained that for the fire of electric vehicles:
"The flammable electrolyte in the battery cell will release oxygen after being decomposed by heat, accelerating combustion. This means that the battery also burns when there is no air. Therefore, the method of isolating the air and spraying carbon dioxide and dry powder is difficult to extinguish. At present, most of the fire fighting operations are flushed with water, taking away a large amount of heat, so that it is completely cooled, the cooling is not completely easy to rekindle, and the cooling is not enough and it is easy to explode. But because the small cells are all set in parallel, the explosion is not concentrated at the same moment. ”
The fire in the Atlantic Ocean bears some resemblance to the 2019 Tesla fire in the Shanghai basement.
At that time, a white Tesla sedan parked in the underground garage first emitted white smoke, which soon burned and caught fire, and the fire affected other vehicles parked around. Due to the pungent smell emitted from the underground garage, firefighters could not enter the garage for a while, and could only fight by pouring water into the garage.
Due to the fire of one vehicle, it is difficult to extinguish the fire at the same time, resulting in multiple vehicles in the same basement suffering losses at the same time.
The fire caused several parking lots to refuse to park electric vehicles.
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Is the supporting infrastructure ready?
The reason why the fire in the Atlantic Ocean has not burned clean after 6 days is that the "existing fire extinguishing and cooling equipment on the Felicity Ace is not enough to deal with the new risks."
In other words, in the case of sales of more than 6.6 million vehicles in the global electric vehicle market in 2021, doubling year-on-year, the characteristics of electric vehicles that are difficult to extinguish once they catch fire have made the logistics and urban infrastructure such as ocean-going cargo ships and parking lots not fully prepared to undertake.
Especially when fire has become one of the biggest safety hazards on board, electric vehicles may increase the probability of fire, and the attributes that increase the difficulty of fire extinguishing add some uncertainty to the current shipping safety.
In 2022, on the one hand, many brands in the electric vehicle market have increased prices due to subsidies, on the other hand, the premiums of some electric vehicle models have soared, and the exclusive new energy vehicle insurance launched for electric vehicles has directly promoted the cost of electric vehicles.
This is also related to the high cost of insurance companies for the new three liability insurance that may be associated with the fire of electric vehicles.
Whether the fire in the Atlantic Ocean will trigger an increase in the cost of marine logistics of electric vehicles, whether the premium will increase, and whether it will eventually trigger an increase in the sales price of imported electric vehicles and transmit to the country is worth paying attention to.
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