The race is on to prevent the sinking of a cargo ship off the Dutch coast which is carrying almost 3,000 vehicles, including 350 Mercedes-Benz, as it burns out of control with an electric car believed to be behind the deadly fire… - dailymail.co.uk
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I love it how its literally safer to carry around 20 gallons of gasoline in a conventional car than 1000lbs of lithium batteries in an electric car.
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Wait for hydrogen cars…
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I live in the future, and my car is powered by Mr. Fusion! 
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Surprise! Media is misreporting the source of a Dutch cargo ship fire Maybe? The Coast guard says officially unknown cause. Just because the Coast Guard talked about how hard it is to put out electric vehicle fires doesn’t mean that’s how they believe it started. So maybe.
I don’t know what they do with the key fobs of all of those vehicles that they’re transporting whether they’re gas or electric. They should not be leaving them in the vehicle. That would be keeping various computers awake and that’s not good.
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Are you the one who will tell them that somebody has to go back on that burning ship and remove the keyfobs of almost 3,000 cars?
Personally I think there is something of a complicated Mexican standoff going on.
- the national government doesn’t want to badmouth EV’s, so all rumors in that direction are neutralised,
- the Coast Guard does not want to touch the ship because there is no precedent and there are no protocoll’s because the national government thinks that having a protocoll for an EV disaster is asking for an EV disaster to happen (ostrich effect)
- the local authorities on the islands want that ship out of the way because it’s bad news for tourism,
- the local authorities on the mainland don’t want that ship in their port because it’s bad news for business,
- it’s big news in NL, but on TV only one person spoke the forbidden words: letting it burn out.
Reason for thinking that the fire is caused by an EV is that these ships are built with over half a century of experience in transporting regular cars. They are equipped with sprinklers, fire proof bulkheads, and so on. The 3,000 regular cars are not filled to the brim with gas, that would cost 3,000 x >50l x €2/l = >€ 300,000 The cars itself are made with a minimum of inflammable materials (as is the ship). I think the fire would have been taken care of if it were just regular cars on board of that that ship.
The Coast Guard said heat coming from the ship was very intense so they could not get close to it.
Let me remind you of a fire in a Tesla MegaPack in Australia. It took 150 firefighters a week to put it out.
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How about LPG? At the moment there are about 200,000 LPG (or bi-fuel) cars in the USA. That’s 0.07% of the total number of cars. At the beginning of the century about 5.5% of cars in NL ran on LPG. Mainly out of cost reasons (we’re cheapo’s). I can’t remember any major incidents with LPG cars but those who fell in the hands of unlicensed people who thought they were Gods gift to the modern industrial society. Hydrogen is just another gas, with one quirk. Because of the (small) dimensions of the H2 molecule you must take a bit of extra care to prevent it from escaping.
Edit: people who look a bit beyond the scope of politicians are warning to NOT rip out our natural gas infrastructure because we are shifting from natural gas to electricity. The existing infratructure can, with minor modifications, live on as the backbone of a coming new hydrogen infrastructure. Because storing gas is simple, compared to storing the same amount of electricity.
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We used lpg cars and trucks at a previous job and they were nothing to write home about. Even with a special delivery truck that brought the gas to our parking lot and topped off each vehicle, it was a wash. You lose both power and mpg, all with a less reliable engine and nobody to work on it when you do have problems. Eventually the whole fleet went back to gasoline…
Some one tell the captain to do a flip lol, flip the ship upside down easy way to put the fire out 
Yeah, in the good old times someone would drop a bomb on the ship to sink it. Those were the days…
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I’m not sure that’s definitely true, but it’s debatable. On one hand, conventional cars do catch fire much more often than electric cars. WAY more often. Like, it’s not even close. Just look at all the Hyundai and Kia fires lately. You can’t even park a Hyundai in the garage anymore theyre just catching fire in the middle of the night. And usually these are electrical fires, gas cars do still have a battery, or two, after all. They aren’t immune to electrical fires.
But on the other hand, when EVs do catch fire it’s a wayyy worse fire. Way hotter, almost impossible to put out, hard to control, unpredictable, emergency crews aren’t equipped for them, the fumes are more toxic. And they can catch fire again after they’ve been put out. Just when you think it’s safe, poof, it’s on fire again
So it’s a toss up I think. I’d definitely rather have a gasoline car catch fire than an EV, at least I might have a chance of putting that one out, even if the chance of an EV fire is lower. But that’s just me. For the record I think electric cars are worse for the environment too btw, at least right now.
But objectively the worst of the worst for fires are hybrids. That’s a perfect storm. Gasoline and batteries. And hybrids catch fire more often than ICE and EVs combined. The worst of both worlds.
Thats a good comparison.
Anyone else think it’s kinda funny that the article goes out of its way to point out that there’s 350 Mercs onboard? Lol
3000 cars, who cares. Wait, 350 of them are a “Mercedes-Benz” !? Now i care about this issue!
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This thread is going to go bad fast.
Indeed.
Feel free to comment on the news, but please strictly avoid all subjective opinions and political / controversial aspects.
I apologize but isn’t all opinion subjective? Not that I really care. I have a tough skin and don’t get triggered/offended easily. I have just seen threads like this go down hill quickly.
I mean no ill harm to anyone. It’s funny though how we use LiIon daily but our opinions on how they should be used caused heated debates.
Yeah, I guess. “Subjective comments” I guess would have been more precise. The point is that there are a lot of facts and even some opinions that can still be mentioned without ruffling any feathers when news like this happens, but we all need to be very careful to self-moderate and reserve a lot of our opinions to help keep the peace.
I completely understand. 
I am just so proud I found the smiley thingy. LOL
Please wait an hour between posts in this topic
It said the thread was in slow mode.
Should I type slower?
I surely don’t want to add fuel to the fires (Dutch saying) but I just got up and enjoyed (as always) my mug of morning tea watching the Dutch morning news.
I heard a (certified) piece of radio communication with the Dutch Coastguard. In it was said that the fire started in an EV, and that an(other?) EV had exploded.
The ship is still burning, a line is attached to a tugboat to prevent it from drifting away.
This line (and tugboat) are not strong enough for actually towing the ship further away from the fairway, but for attaching a stronger line the ship needs to be boarded, and that is considered too dangerous at this moment.
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We have the saying in English too 
Sad that someone has died and others are injured.
I’d be interested to know the actual mechanisms behind what’s going on, won’t know until a investigation is carried out and made public.
I’d have thought that batteries (generally) don’t just spontaneously combust, so I’m guessing there was a short somewhere. News reports on battery fires seem to mostly be during charging.
Do EVs have isolation switches between the battery and car, I know big physical red ones aren’t likely, but how about ones controlled by the “ignition” key?
I suspect a move towards LFP chemistry will reduce instances of fires, but I’m by no means a battery expert.
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