Cargo Ship Carrying Thousands of Luxury Cars Sinks in the Atlantic

The Panama-flagged 60,000-ton service provider ship carrying around 4,000 luxurious cars—including products from

Porsche,

Bentley, Audi, Lamborghini and other

Volkswagen AG

brands—caught fire in February and burned intensely for days.

SMIT Salvage, the Dutch enterprise charged with salvaging the ship, despatched a group of substantial oceangoing tugboats to the scene and was towing the vessel to protection when it sank.

Salvage crews and the Portuguese navy experienced mentioned that the intensity of the hearth may be stated by a huge amount of electrical motor vehicles on board. Some batteries are recognized to be flammable and burn at significant temperature when they combust, making this kind of a blaze challenging to extinguish.

The Felicity Ace hearth is a single of the initially on board a major automobile carrier loaded with a significant cargo of electrical autos. The incident has sparked discussion between insurers and regulators about how to properly transport these autos, a issue that will gain urgency as EVs become far more common.

Even though the induce of the fireplace on the Felicity Ace could possibly never ever be regarded due to the fact the ship is lying at the base of the ocean, industry experts say there is a risk that batteries in electric powered vehicles can brief circuit and catch hearth. That could signify that safety measures not applicable for typical cars could possibly have to be taken into account through transport, regulators explained.

Right after the blaze stopped,

Volkswagen

experienced explained it expected “that substantial pieces of the virtually 4,000 autos from many group brand names have been so broken in the ship hearth that they can no extended be shipped.”

Volkswagen

declined to remark on the benefit of the cargo.

Incident insurance coverage specialists Russell Group Ltd. estimated that the cargo on board the Felicity Ace was truly worth about $438 million, of which the autos on board accounted for about $401 million. Russell believed that VW could facial area losses of at minimum $155 million.

Publish to William Boston at [email protected]