Lithium-ion blaze aboard ship - specialist crews en route

[Scorpio]

Cargo is electric cars not E-bikes but it's a harsh example of what can go wrong when you have a lot of high capacity batteries in one place.
Scary stuff https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/cargo-ship-carrying-cars-us-catches-fire-adrift-atlantic-crew-rcna16675

 

[matthewslack]

Cargo is electric cars not E-bikes but it's a harsh example of what can go wrong when you have a lot of high capacity batteries in one place.
Scary stuff https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/cargo-ship-carrying-cars-us-catches-fire-adrift-atlantic-crew-rcna16675

No doubt batteries are sustaining the fire, but they may not be the initiating event. A recent accident report from NTSB in the US lists 6 previous car carrier fires, in addition to the one investigated, just since 2015.

Car carriers rather than electric cars are the common strand.

Failure to Properly Disconnect and Secure Vehicle Batteries Led to Fire Aboard Vehicle Carrier Höegh Xiamen

www.ntsb.gov

 

[geoff967]

Not sure how accurate report is as Bentley for instance does not make revs.
See Mr miserable tesla shipping thread for more info

 

[geoff967]

Sorry above sounds a bit abrupt but there is nothing like a good headline to get clicks.na to pedelecs of course

 

[Andy-Mat]

It really does not matter how or what started the fire (as some here appear to think), once certain types of batteries have "joined" the blaze, the results are fixed in stone.
Although I ride a Li-Ion powered e-bike, and I assume that if the battery catches fire, I can jump off, is still dangeroues enough at my age, but electric cars have already killed people, as they sometimes start burning so abruptly that they had no chance to get out in time, or were unconscious after an accident.
This list is just tesla deaths, so the actual numbers will be much higher if other makes are also included.

Tesla Deaths: Digital record of Tesla crashes resulting in death

Tesla Deaths is a record of Tesla accidents that involved the death of a driver, occupant, cyclist, motorcyclist, or pedestrian.

www.tesladeaths.com

Till a safe battery chemistry is designed and available for cars (plus greater distances on one charge), they are not for me personally....
Its also amazing at the number of people on Pedelec who "poo poo" the accident statistics with Li-ion batteries..
regards to all
Andy

 

[flecc]

Its also amazing at the number of people on Pedelec who "poo poo" the accident statistics with Li-ion batteries..

That's people with a sense of proportion.

Not people like you with such an obsession with lithium fires that you willfully distort by posting irrelevancies such as all Tesla accidents, regardless of whether fire was involved.

Plus inferences like this with no proof whatsover:

"the actual numbers will be much higher if other makes are also included."

The fact is that fires in all types of vehicles are commonplace and liquid fuelled vehicles often catch fire when they crash. We've even had quite a number of London's diesel buses catch fire and burn out without crashing. LINK

 

[Andy-Mat]

That's people with a sense of proportion.

Not people like you with such an obsession with lithium fires that you willfully distort by posting irrelevancies such as all Tesla accidents, regardless of whether fire was involved.

Plus inferences like this with no proof whatsover:

"the actual numbers will be much higher if other makes are also included."

The fact is that fires in all types of vehicles are commonplace and liquid fuelled vehicles often catch fire when they crash. We've even had quite a number of London's diesel buses catch fire and burn out without crashing. LINK

You are obviously one of the Li-ion "Poo Pooers" I mentioned earlier.....

Furthermore, before commenting in an unfriendly manner on my "supplied" statistics negatively, perhaps you would like to find and add some statistics supporting your thoughts and dreams here? Otherwise you come over as making a rather poorly thought out counter argument.
But with regard to Tesla accidents, it apparently very common for the battery to catch fire, after even quite minor shunts.

Speaking only for myself, in almost 60 years of driving on a full license, in many countries around the world, many very long distance journeys, in every type of traffic, and totting up around 60 - 80,000 kms per years whwn I worked still, also being 16 times hit from behind (where the fuel tank generally is), once from a 40 ton truck, due people looking at their phones, being drunk etc etc, I have NEVER had a fire in the many liquid fueled cars that I have driven and owned......my private and company cars that I drove (even now) for the last 42 years were all Diesel, a liquid that is quite difficult to get burning without extra heat and it even more rarely explodes than petrol can, due to a vastly higher flashpoint....

I expect you will say that I was just lucky!!!

IMHO Tesla drivers (and other battery powered electric cars of course!) need to pray to the right Gods before getting inside one.....some forget maybe!


Andy

 

[flecc]

I expect you will say that I was just lucky!!!

Just like I am, and all the other three-quarters of a million e-car drivers in the UK are who don't have fires in our e-cars.

IMHO Tesla drivers (and other battery powered electric cars of course!) need to pray to the right Gods before getting inside one.....some forget maybe!

Utter nonsense. You've clearly shown your hatred of e-cars though the bigotry of your posts, raking up every possible objection to them. A few of your objections do have a basis in fact, but what you fail to realise is that the world and its people change, making such objections disappear.

As for what you call my "weak argument" about bus fires and your diesel defence, in London over one in 600 DIESEL buses in the fleet have burnt out completely, one in 200 of the articulated diesel buses before we scrapped them. These are infinitely worse than the figures for Tesla cars.

But not one of our hundreds of fully electric lithium battery buses have suffered any fire. They and parallel hybrid buses also using lithium batteries, together with hydrogen fuel cell buses are the only ones we are buying now, all diesel only bus purchasing banned.

Just to cheer you up though, one of the few so called Boris buses caught fire and they are hybrids with diesel and lithium electric drives. They though have a design fault and they are all scheduled to be prematurely scrapped as not up to the task.
.

 

[geoff967]

I think the statistics are that an electric car is 50 times less likely to "burst into flames trapping the driver" than one with other types of fuel but do not let a good statistic get in the way of a good prejudice

 

[Scorpio]

Another ship is ablaze - started when the battery on an electric car caught fire.

Race to salvage sinking ship carrying 350 Mercedes and 3,000 vehicles

At least one crew member died and others were injured after fire ripped through the Fremantle Highway, a 18,500-ton car-carrying vessel. Still burning, teams are fighting to stop it from sinking.

www.dailymail.co.uk

Adding this here rather than start another thread that's so similar to the last one.

 

[matthewslack]

Another ship is ablaze - started when the battery on an electric car caught fire.

Race to salvage sinking ship carrying 350 Mercedes and 3,000 vehicles

At least one crew member died and others were injured after fire ripped through the Fremantle Highway, a 18,500-ton car-carrying vessel. Still burning, teams are fighting to stop it from sinking.

www.dailymail.co.uk

Adding this here rather than start another thread that's so similar to the last one.

I doubt if the cause of the start of the fire is known yet! There will be a formal inquiry which may take a year or more to report. An electric car battery burning is not the same thing as an electric car being the origin of the fire. 25 electric cars amongst 3000...

Another car carrier fire in US waters a while ago happened because damaged vehicles in an unsafe state were loaded, in direct and knowing contravention of the companies own policy.

DCA20FM020.aspx

www.ntsb.gov

 

[soundwave]

 

[Craiggor 2]

Reports now saying 498 electric cars on board.

 

[flecc]

No, not another one. This is the same one Scorpio posted just above on this link
.

 

[soundwave]

has it sank yet

 

[flecc]

has it sank yet

No, it's not going to.

"Dutch authorities say the fire on a car carrier off the coast of the Netherlands is finally receding. Salvagers have managed to board the vessel and attach new towlines. This should give them better control of the burning ship."
.

 

[soundwave]

well if you cant put a fire out in the middle of the sea says it all or fight fire with fire power

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPEAR_3

that fire is making the planet boil 3 of those suckers will put out the fire and vw can pay for them and dig all that crap up out of the sea and pay for that as well.

seems the qc on all of this stuff has gone down the shitter like all mass produced crap that's also unfixable esp those fkn brose motors the bikes are 10k because you have to pay for 2-3 replacement motors in the 2 year warranty

 

[portals]

 

[lenny]

 

[MikelBikel]

'Sincerity Ace', sister ship of Felicity, car carrier burnt, abandoned in Pacific, 5 dead, year 2018..

Grimaldi line, 'Hoegh Xiamen', 2420 cars, in port Jacksonville, Florida, scrapped, year 2020..

Snowscape car carriers 'Felicity Ace', 4000 cars, Atlantic ocean off Azores, sunk, last year..

Grimaldi line 'Euroferry Olympia', between Greece/Italy, people & cars & trucks, eight passengers missing..last year

Grimaldi line 'Grande Costa D'Avorio', 1200 cars, even though it was in Newark port New Jersey, 2 firefighters dead, weeks ago..

'Feemantle Highway', in Dutch Ameland Island waters, 3000 cars, still burning, under tow, days ago..

('What is Going on in Shipping' YT channel)

Major increase in insurance losses, therefore premiums, and end prices..
Not to minimise the loss of life of course, RIP.

Big factors seems to be a relaxation of ship bulkhead rules, creating big steel boxes without dividers. Packing cars very close and lowering each deck so bad access for firefighting! Bring back Halon? Flag of convenience registrations may also result in lower standards?

This problem may well affect bike battery prices & availability. So I would hope none would be taking it lightly. :-(