A ship carrying 4,000 high-end cars from Porsche, Audi, Bentley and Lamborghini is in the grip of a fire that cannot be brought under control. The batteries of electric vehicles could be the cause of the disaster.
The Felicity Ace, a 200-meter-long freighter, has been engulfed in flames for several days while carrying around 4,000 luxury vehicles. The fire broke out while he was sailing off the Azores. The Portuguese Navy was able to evacuate the 22 crew members, but the cars are still burning.
Electric car batteries caught fire
All models belong to the Volkswagen Group. An estimated 1100 Porsches are on the Felicity Ace. Nearly 200 Bentleys are also present, as is a fleet of Lamborghinis and Audi vehicles. For the latter case, it could be more precisely the reference E-tron Sportbacks. The freighter was supposed to reach the United States from Germany. The market value of the cars lost in the fire could exceed $150 million.
According to a Portuguese captain interviewed by Reuters, the intervention on the freighter to try to save part of the cargo which can still be saved as well as the building itself is very complicated because the battery of an indeterminate number of vehicles electricity caught fire, exposing the emergency services to great danger.
For the time being, we do not yet know if it was these same batteries that started the fire on the Felicity Ace or if the origin of the fire came from elsewhere. If the situation is deemed stable, “the ship is burning from one end to the other” and “everything is on fire about five meters above the waterline”we learn from a Portuguese navy officer.
Volkswagen is already the victim of shortages of components, and in particular of semiconductors, which are hitting the production lines of the automotive industry hard, this incident will not help the situation of the German giant.
Source: The Verge
