Breaking: Cargo Ship Carrying Electric Vehicles Is Burning Near Ameland in the Netherlands

Update: Mercedes-Benz confirmed to Automotive News that about 350 of the vehicles on board the ship were Mercedes cars, adding that the company was in contact with the transport provider. New pictures were added to the gallery.

Electric vehicles are again suspected to have caused a fire onboard a cargo ship, raising new questions about the safety of Li-ion batteries. The Fremantle Highway cargo ship had just departed Bremerhaven in Germany when a fire was reported onboard. The vessel was carrying 2,857 vehicles and reports claim that 25 of them were electric. No carmaker was named for now, although people think it might be Mercedes-Benz or Volkswagen. The Coast Guard suspects the fire was caused or amplified by a Li-ion battery in one of the electric vehicles catching fire.

The ship was sailing 17 miles (27 km) north of the Dutch island of Ameland when the fire started on Tuesday night. Although the crew attempted to extinguish it, the fire spread quickly, making their efforts futile. One crew member died, while others suffered smoke inhalation or were injured during the evacuation. A total of 23 crew were onboard the ship, which is now abandoned.

The fire is currently raging in the front section of the ship, which is now listing, and it's feared it may sink. The firefighting crews arriving at the scene could not board the vessel due to the blaze, so fireboats were used to fight the fire and cool the ship. Rescue teams attached a cable to prevent it from drifting and blocking the essential shipping routes to and from Germany.

This is not the first fire on a car carrier and will certainly not be the last. On February 16, 2022, a fire broke onboard Felicity Ace, a cargo ship with 4,000 cars, including about 300 EVs. The vessel burnt until there was nothing left to burn and sank two weeks later. The Felicity Ace tragedy was considered a trigger for significant changes in the shipping industry to prevent such tragedies. Still, this did not prevent another fire on the Fremantle Highway cargo ship.

Electric vehicles contain Li-ion batteries that are notoriously difficult to extinguish. When a battery pack catches fire, the oxides in the chemistry of the cells make them generate oxygen, keeping the blaze alive. Even if the fire does not originate in the battery pack itself, heat can cause Li-ion cells to self-ignite and propagate from cell to cell and car to car. The only way to stop this is to cool the battery pack until the thermal runaway reaction subsides or wait until there's nothing else to burn. On a carrier ship, both options are unpractical.

In the wake of the Felicity Ace disaster, several shipping companies announced they would not transport electric vehicles anymore. This went as far as banning EVs from ferries in Norway, an extreme measure considering the high EV penetration and that some islands in the region are only accessible by ferry.