Ship carrying 3K vehicles on fire, spur concerns over EV fire risks

• A cargo ship carrying 3,000 cars caught fire off the coast of the Netherlands.
• 23 crew members were evacuated but 1 person died. The ship is still on fire.
• The cause of the fire is unknown, but the incident is spurring concerns over fire risks from EVs.

A massive cargo ship burning off the coast of the Netherlands is igniting concerns over fire risks from electric vehicles.

The Fremantle Highway, a 656-foot Panama-flagged ship built in December 2013 was transporting 3,000 vehicles from Germany to Singapore when a fire broke out on Tuesday night just off the Dutch coast, according to Shoei Kisen Kaisha, the ship’s Japanese owner.

The Dutch Coast Guard said on its blog that 23 crew members were evacuated, but one person died. The cause of the fire is still unknown. It was still burning as of 10.21 p.m. local time on Thursday. 

“The fire is still burning, and there is still a lot of smoke. But the intensity of the fire seems to have diminished compared with yesterday,” the Dutch Coast Guard said, per an AFP translation. However, it wasn’t safe to bring a salvage team onboard the ship yet, it added.

The Dutch Coast Guard said the cause of the fire is still unknown, but there is speculation about whether it could have been started by electric vehicles, or EVs.

Just 25 or less than 1% of the 2,857 vehicles on board the Fremantle Highway were electric vehicles.

The incident has raised concerns that the maritime industry is unprepared to ship these cars across the seas, Reuters reported Thursday. 

Maritime officials and insurers told Reuters the shipping industry is still playing catch-up to the rise of EVs, most of which are powered by lithium-ion batteries that contain highly flammable materials. The cars on cargo ships are typically shipped in tight spaces, making it difficult to put out any fire and compounding the safety concerns, the news agency added. 

“There is already a whole lot of communication underway about this,” he said, “but with this incident, it becomes apparent we might need to speed up the process, especially when you consider that the number of this sort of cars is only going to rise,” Nathan Habers, the spokesperson for the Dutch shipowners’ association told Reuters.

There were 209 ship fires reported in 2022 — the highest number in a decade and 17% more than in 2021, according to a May report from insurer Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty. Of these, 13 occurred on car carriers. 

In February 2022, another 650-foot ship carrying around 4,000 cars, including Porsches and Bentleys — caught fire in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean while it was on its way from Germany to the US. The cause of the fire is still unclear, although the ship was burning for three weeks before it sank, with the fire likely intensifying due to electric vehicle batteries onboard, according to reports at the time.

The Dutch Coast Guard did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider.