By Steven Symes 
An auto transport ship carrying hundreds of EVs and in total a few thousand cars was abandoned in the Pacific Ocean. The United States Coast Guard says in a press release it responded on the afternoon of June 4 to the situation, rescuing the crew of 22 from the vessel that’s about 300 miles south of Adak, Alaska.
Rented Aston Martin crashes during a high-speed police chase.
However, the fire that reportedly started on a deck containing electric cars is anything but under control, as reported by Reuters. It’s hardly the first time a vessel containing EVs has fallen victim to thermal runaway fueled by lithium ion battery cells found in electric vehicles.
Firefighters can struggle to put out an EV fire on the road, thanks to the battery reigniting after the flames are extinguished. In fact, even after the blaze is put out, it can spontaneously come back days later.
With an auto transport ship like this one, which reportedly has 800 EVs onboard, the problem is greatly multiplied. Such a fire is even harder to fight because it’s difficult to get water into the decks where the electric cars are fueling the blaze, cooling them off enough to hopefully head off thermal runaway.
Even if the fire didn’t start with an EV, the batteries in the cars could fuel the inferno for days on end.
While the ship was outfitted with firefighting equipment, the crew used all the C02 in the fire suppression system trying to put out the blaze, reports The Washington Post. That’s when the decision to abandon ship was made.
The ship, called Morning Midas and hailing from the UK, had picked up cars from a port in Yantai, China and was on its way to Lazaro Cardenas, Mexico. We don’t know what brand of vehicles were onboard, but some Chinese automakers with healthy EV offerings are sold in Mexico, like MG and BYD.
Back in 2022, an auto transport ship which had about 4,000 vehicles onboard, including a number of EVs, caught fire off the coast of Portugal. Authorities finally tried towing the vessel to port two weeks after, but it sank in the Azores archipelago.
Hopefully, the Morning Midas won’t suffer the same fate.
Image via 5th_pass, RAFAELCORTES1/X
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