11 ms·

Is It Safe to Ship Thousands of Electric Cars on Big Ships?

tlb 5y ago
Can ships not afford a satellite uplink for continuous telemetry? Compared to the $1000s/hr of diesel they burn, the data can't cost much.
- montanalow 5y ago
  The entire crew was rescued. The article is nonsense.
  - jhugo 5y ago
    What's your point? Of course the avoidance of a human tragedy is great but the cost of this incident (to the shipping company, automotive manufacturers, insurers, environment) was enormous. It makes perfect sense to try to understand it better.
    - montanalow 5y ago
      My point is that the ships telemetry was not an issue. Blaming electric vehicles with no basis, or lack of telemetry with clear evidence to the contrary is…something.
      - tlb 5y ago
        The issue is that they don't know what caused the ship to sink, because the data recorder is at the bottom of the ocean. If they'd streamed the data continuously, we'd have useful information to prevent future sinkings.
      - jhugo 5y ago
        Of course it's an issue; the cost of finding out why it sank is huge because it didn't have telemetry.
  - denni9th 5y ago
    This time. A fire on board a vessel is highly dangerous and should always be avoided if possible. If a car was the cause of the fire, additional safety measures should be implemented on these types of vessel to potentially save the lives of the crew.
- HWR_14 5y ago
  The question isn't "can the ship support continuous telemetry" but "does it generate more value than it costs". And I'm not sure it does. Also, since the crew survived, why are they so concerned to get the voice recorder? Is it just because of the recorded alarm information, and if so why keep referring to it as a voice recorder and not a black box.
  - jhugo 5y ago
    The recorder contains alarms and other data as well as the conversations on the bridge. As I understand it, they're like an aviation CVR and FDR but combined. Just like with aircraft accidents, the conversations can provide as much (or sometimes more) value as the data. It gives you insight into decision making, details that may not be recorded in the data ("I was just in area XYZ and I saw sparks coming out of one of the vehicles"), etc.
    - bornfreddy 5y ago
      Curious - why is this recorder not a floating device (which broadcasts its position) so that it could be retrieved easily? It's not like it needs to record the ship's descent to the bottom. Or is the primary function of this device unrelated to sinking?
      - rob74 5y ago
        I'm not an expert here, but yes, there are a lot of incidents and accidents that need to be investigated that don't involve the ship sinking (remember the Ever Given?). Plus, having a device installed in some kind of floating pod which detaches automatically when the ship sinks requires a lot of extra equipment, it has to be on the outside, so exposed to salt water and corrosion, etc.
      - donthellbanme 5y ago
        I believe all ships have a transponder. Russian criminals were stealing rich boys million dollar yachts a few years ago. They would board the ships when the skeleton crew was off the ship. They would take the transponder, and put in model hobby ships. The owner, and authorities thought their yacht was exactly where they left it. The Russian thieves would take the yachts back to Russia. (I thought is was clever. They stole millions of dollars in terms of yachts, and were eventually caught buy Interpol.
- TaylorAlexander 5y ago
  Especially with Starlink allowing roaming mode these days, though I wouldn’t expect them to pick up on that tech by now. Also hello I think I rode your self balancing scooter at robo games in 2005. Or maybe you just showed it to me. Your web pages with details of your scooter projects were great inspiration to me as I went through college in anticipation of my future career in robotics (which is now going great). I’ve actually got a clip of that 2005 Robo Games on my YouTube channel if you want a bit of nostalgia. I’m the blonde kid talking about the art bots! https://youtu.be/J2R-TlBomnQ https://youtu.be/J2R-TlBomnQ
flimflamm 5y ago
Yes
montanalow 5y ago
This article is pure speculation by an insurance company that isn’t involved, and admit they have no idea what happened. FUD.
- jhugo 5y ago
  They're providing background, which they have more than enough relevant expertise to provide. I found it a useful perspective; in particular an un-connected party can often speak more freely about issues. What exactly did you identify as FUD in this article?
- topspin 5y ago
  > speculation by an insurance company Speculation about risk is literally what insurance companies do; how they determine the terms of insurance. I learned a lot from this. One, shipping is pretty fly-by-night. Operators are winging it and trusting to luck in a lot of cases; failing to secure cargo for expediency for example. That's more corroboration than new knowledge. Two, fires are common on cargo ships: 14 times a year some cargo ship starts burning for some reason, car carriers being among the more frequent. Small fires that are quickly contained aren't included in that figure because they don't get reported. Three, car carrying ships aren't prepared to deal with cascading lithium battery fires. They can handle ICE fires but haven't yet adapted to the electric vehicles they're actually starting to carry in quantity. Four, the people that have to analyze the risks involved because they're liable for the costs are more candid about electric car fires; they say straight up that "lithium-ion batteries—they can ignite a lot more vigorously as compared to any other cars" and "a high impact on these cars and a lithium-ion battery can ignite them." A refreshing change from the obligatory handwaving and cognitive dissonance one gets at all other times. In electronics there is the concept of a bathtub curve. The frequency of component failure is high when the components are new. The frequency decreases afterwards and later increases again with old age. Applied to cargo ships full of electric cars with millions of brand new battery cells, obviously the risk that some battery will ignite and sink the ship has to be considered. And it will be considered -- if only by insurance companies -- whether electric car proponents like it or not.
  - 5y ago
boundlessdreamz 5y ago
They say not securing the cars properly can cause impacts that cause fire. But these cars are impact tested for passenger safety. The only vulnerability for the battery pack will be a bottom impact which should not occur on Roll on-Roll Off Carrier. Ships do need to adapt their firefighting process for Lithium-Ion batteries. But I'm not convinced about impacts causing fire.
- Ekaros 5y ago
  Initial manufacturing defects are likely a decent cause. And you only need one in ten or hundred thousand to still have issues if such can affect other vehicles tightly packed around.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    One way in which battery packs catch fire: initial weld looks good and passes inspection but turns out to be faulty after all. It disconnects, then the pack i s charged (this should not happen to cars intended for overseas transport), vibration causes the bad connection to temporarily make contact, then the current welds the contact more solidly and large amounts of current start to flow from the charged cells into the one uncharged cell. Depending on pack geometry this can be 20:1 without any kind of protection mechanism in between. The one cell then catches fire, which in turn can set off the cells around it. This is why per-cell fusing is a thing in newer designs and why weld quality is super important during manufacture.
- TheSpiceIsLife 5y ago
  There's a couple videos on YouTube of vehicles on a carrier ship where the vehicles are bash around a fiar bit beyond what might happen in a passenger safety impact test. This one shows the result of a ship passing nearby a Category 3 hurricane and teh aftermath https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7EqGzO_qsc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7EqGzO_qsc
  - terom 5y ago
    My parents had their car parked right behind a caravan with a bike rack on the back - they didn't notice anything when driving off the ship, and so it was kinda too late to do anything about it by the time they noticed the impact damage to their car's hood from the bike rack bouncing up and down. No risk of that happening here >:D
mirekrusin 5y ago
Can they ship them without batteries?
- speedgoose 5y ago
  It would not be cost effective and more and more cars do not have removable batteries.
- rocqua 5y ago
  I think that to do the actual 'ro-ro' (roll on roll off) they are shipping the cars with a decent bit of charge in the battery for the roll-off stage. It would probably help a lot to ship them with less charge.
- jhugo 5y ago
  Sure, but then you'll have to ship the batteries separately and those battery ships will have the same concerns but multiplied due to higher density.
  - pm90 5y ago
    thats where specialization comes in. its why oil/lng tankers don’t catch fire all the time
- megablast 5y ago
  Yes. Then when they put the batteries back in they can claim they were made in the USA.
throwaway290 5y ago
Tangentially, I wonder about the environmental impacts of a container full of large Li-ion batteries, such as those found in electric cars, lost in the sea. Cargo ships are known to dump containers* (and oil**, incidentally) into oceans. * https://therevelator.org/container-ship-accidents/ https://therevelator.org/container-ship-accidents/ ** https://www.dw.com/en/exclusive-cargo-ships-dumping-oil-into-the-sea-go-unpunished/a-61201989 https://www.dw.com/en/exclusive-cargo-ships-dumping-oil-into...
cratermoon 5y ago
Is it currently safe to ship mass numbers of electric cars, under the current safety standards? Probably not. Should those standards and expectations be updated and refined to address the changing nature of hazardous cargo? Absolutely.
amaajemyfren 5y ago
Fuel literally burns and it is carried by ship - I believe there is a way to safely ferry them in ships.
- csunbird 5y ago
  Fuel is also carried by special ships with extra precautions, but electric cars are carried just like normal cars without any extra safety.
  - amaajemyfren 5y ago
    So you learn no? I'm sure the way fuel was carried during World War 1 is not the way the US Military carries it now. Special ships? That probably depends on the economics. If the Electric Car Industry makes it worth a shippers while - Someone will invest in a special purpose vehicle. So now we are at the first stages of this - in time - if the industry succeeds - the money will come.
- minedwiz 5y ago
  To be fair, many (all?) of these ships are burning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_fuel_oil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_fuel_oil, which is not at all like petrol in that it requires preheating and atomisation to burn.
  - amaajemyfren 5y ago
    Thanks for this. It is some really nasty stuff.
  - mlindner 5y ago
    Granted, but after it's pre-heated it burns quite well.
    - MertsA 5y ago
      It still doesn't burn well unless it's in a fine mist. Even just a puddle of diesel is actually quite difficult to get burning on its own without some other material as a wick of sorts. https://youtu.be/7nL10C7FSbE https://youtu.be/7nL10C7FSbE Great practical demonstration of the different flammability characteristics of some common fuels. For the tar that a container ship burns, it's not going to be very volatile. Coal also burns quite well, but unless it's powdered, good luck trying to ignite some with just a match.
blenderdt 5y ago
This article is not about if EVs are safe. It's about the fact that putting out a fire when batteries are involved is hard. Every week there is a fire on a cargo ship. Most are not caused by the cargo. But when the cargo catches fire you want to be able to put it out before the whole ships turns into scrap.
- mlindner 5y ago
  EVs catch fire drastically less than combustion fueled vehicles because they don't involve explosive materials. Also we ship giant ships full of oil and gas all over the world every single day which is vastly more combustible than batteries.
  - kec 5y ago
    ICE vehicles aren't filled with fuel when shipped, and oil and gas both have to aerosolize in an oxygen rich environment before ignition is possible. Batteries just have to get hot, and that can occur from simple mechanical damage.
    - KennyBlanken 5y ago
      ICE vehicles contain enough gas to be driven around at the plant lots, in/out of autocars (rail cars that carry cars), around at port lots, on and off ships, and so on. "Simple mechanical damage" to the battery in an EV is a lot harder than you think. The packs are designed to remain intact in crashes...
  - IshKebab 5y ago
    Oil and gas require oxygen to burn.
    - Ekaros 5y ago
      And heat. And you know what is around ships? Near infinite amount of easily handled high heat capacity coolant. Okay, usually the stuff is pretty contaminated, but some cleaning and resurfacing is better than everything staying burning.
riaandewit 5y ago
So, don’t ship cars then. Tweak cities for micro mobility and walking. Also: a couple of burned and sunk ships is a much cheaper price to pay than climate change. If the cost of the odd lithium fire is a lot, wait till you factor in the costs of the emissions of an ICE over the vehicle lifetime. This reeks of FUD during the death throes of the petrochemical industry, tbh.
robocat 5y ago
Can the risks of battery fires be deeply reduced if the batteries have a very low charge when transported?
- elihu 5y ago
  Probably to some extent, but there are limits. If the charge is too low it damages the battery, and self-discharge is a thing. So, if you're moving cars with a low charge you're under a self-imposed time limit to get them where they need to go and recharged before their cell voltages drop below their normal operating range.
- hedora 5y ago
  My car's manual says storing it at under 80% charge for more than a few weeks is a fire hazard. It's about five years old. If I remember right, lithium ion batteries explode if over discharged. I have no idea why self discharge doesn't cause old forgotten laptops to routinely catch fire.
jrockway 5y ago
Do lithium batteries contain an oxidizer? Is an inert atmosphere enough?
- NickNameNick 5y ago
  I think that's inherent in the definition of a chemical battery. Sustaining an electrical charge difference across the poles of the cell by undergoing a chemical reaction. For the common NMC batteries used in cars, I think the other metals start as oxides, which get reduced to oxidise the lithium. In any case, I doubt that an inert atmosphere would help much. A better approach might be to have high-capacity water pipes pre-plumbed to allow flood cooling of the affected cars. Possibly from underneath.
mytailorisrich 5y ago
This boils down to safety of battery EVs. Indeed, soon they will be everywhere. Think not only of cargo ships but of traffic, rows of parked cars, whole carparks, etc. In this case, the change is that was probably considered an inert cargo (cars) will now have be considered a potentially hazardous cargo perhaps requiring extra safety measures.
- _ph_ 5y ago
  It might simply boil down on learning how to safely treat EVs. As the article points out, currently they are shipped like combustion engined vehicles and so far there is no differentiation in treatment. Combustion engined vehicles became relatively safe to handle by about 100 years of experience. Still, statistics point out that they catch fire more often than EVs. But that doesn't mean, one might not have to handle EVs slightly different when putting them on these ships. Like tying them down properly, adjusting the fire extinguishing facilities accordingly. And of course, battery technology itself and the engineering of BEVs will progress constantly.
lnsru 5y ago
Since the normal container ships often have many refrigerated containers and the crew manage to control their temperature. Maybe roro ship crews will get access to the battery temperature data and will be able to prepare suspicious cars for offloading straight into ocean. Loosing few cars is probably better than whole shop with thousand cars.
- Ekaros 5y ago
  That would affect capacity quite badly. My understanding is that these big roro ships really don't have room or height to maneuverer things around. Instead anything is backed as tightly as possible.
Animats 5y ago
I'm not too happy about very large lithium ion batteries as a mass market product in low-end vehicles. Lithium iron phosphate, which doesn't have the thermal runaway problem but stores less energy per kilogram, may be more appropriate there. Both BYD and Tesla are going that route at the low end. Light electric vehicles (bikes, scooters, skateboards) are now causing a sizable number of fires in NYC.[1] It's mostly a battery quality problem, apparently. FDNY reported 28 battery fires in 2019, 44 in 2020, and 104 in 2021. Bike and scooter shop fires tend to result in multiple batteries cooking off. One thing would stop much of this: making Amazon criminally responsible for selling power electrical devices which do not have verifiable UL certification. [1] https://www.firerescue1.com/fdny/articles/fdny-massive-fire-that-injured-2-ffs-was-sparked-by-e-bike-battery-Kj742urKFV3V5uR0 https://www.firerescue1.com/fdny/articles/fdny-massive-fire-...
- Reason077 5y ago
  Elon Musk has said that he believes a significant portion of the industry will move to LFP (Lithium iron phosphate) chemistry due to its lower cost, fewer supply constraints, and better safety and stability properties. It was recently reported that Ford is working on LFP packs for their Mustang and F-150 Lightning EVs.
  - moffkalast 5y ago
    So they say, but the main gripe of switching to EVs has always been their too small range. Your average Li-ion 21700 cell has a capacity of 4-5Ah, whereas one with an LFP chemistry only gets 2-3Ah. That's almost a 50 % reduction in spatial density, not to mention their abysmal C rating. Perhaps they would fit for PHEV usage, but for pure EVs they would be rather shite imo.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - Reason077 5y ago
      The standard range Tesla Model 3 says otherwise. They’ve been using LFP for a while now and it actually has longer range than it’s non-LFP predecessor, albeit with somewhat increased weight. Charge rate on modern, well-managed LFP cells is not abysmal. The LFP Model 3 SR gets excellent charging speeds.
oxplot 5y ago
> As the world quickly switches to electric cars, how are we going to get them from factories to showrooms, especially when they have to cross oceans? Pick the phone up and call Tesla logistics department. They’ll fill you right in.
- hedora 5y ago
  Why do you think Musk has put so much time and money into the Boring Company? Everyone knows EVs are powered by the disembodied souls of the damned. Of course they can't cross over salt water!
kkfx 5y ago
I think it's not much different than shipping refined petrol or LPG... The main issue is always the need of transports, unless we can scale toward mass distributed small productions to built as much as possible locally so to avoid the scale of eventual accidents, not much differently than the concept of coming back from big ships to smaller one for petrol, hyper-giant plane trend to smaller ones etc Accidents/incidents can always happen but at smaller scale means smaller issues...
aurizon 5y ago
A ship at sea can have a cloud repository of data etc, immediately available, not 10,000 feet underwater as well as no data loss. Good job for a mobile Starlink the monthly cost is trivial compared with the annual budget
sunstone 5y ago
If it's safe to ship tons of LNG on big ships there's almost certainly a way to ship batteries safely. It might take a few 'incidents' though before best practise becomes clear.
- blamazon 5y ago
  In a similar direction, I was thinking of the zillions of gallons of petroleum products that have accidentally ended up in ecosystems during transport. [1]: https://gcaptain.com/a-short-list-of-major-oil-spills-from-ships/ https://gcaptain.com/a-short-list-of-major-oil-spills-from-s...
hedora 5y ago
Say we burn and sink ten of these barges per year out on the open ocean. How much environmental damage could that possibly cause vs. acidification from dissolved CO2? (It would be good to reduce the number of barges that sink and also address global warming, of course!)
lizardactivist 5y ago
I say it's safe. Volkswagen group should definitely ship more cars on big ships, and if their ship catches fire again, then they should stop beating about and call it what it at that point is: sabotage.
- dr-detroit 5y ago
  they would need to expand on their 4% ev market share to have the need to do that
  - lizardactivist 5y ago
    "they would need to expand on their 4% ev market share to have the need to do that" Perhaps there are forces working to ensure they don't succeed in that.
almost_usual 5y ago
Has there been a large earthquake yet in an EV dense area? That will be interesting.
_8j50 5y ago
One more reason to make car batteries replacable instead of rechargable only.

tlb 5y ago

Can ships not afford a satellite uplink for continuous telemetry? Compared to the $1000s/hr of diesel they burn, the data can't cost much.

montanalow 5y ago
The entire crew was rescued. The article is nonsense.
- jhugo 5y ago
  What's your point? Of course the avoidance of a human tragedy is great but the cost of this incident (to the shipping company, automotive manufacturers, insurers, environment) was enormous. It makes perfect sense to try to understand it better.
  - montanalow 5y ago
    My point is that the ships telemetry was not an issue. Blaming electric vehicles with no basis, or lack of telemetry with clear evidence to the contrary is…something.
    - tlb 5y ago
      The issue is that they don't know what caused the ship to sink, because the data recorder is at the bottom of the ocean. If they'd streamed the data continuously, we'd have useful information to prevent future sinkings.
    - jhugo 5y ago
      Of course it's an issue; the cost of finding out why it sank is huge because it didn't have telemetry.
- denni9th 5y ago
  This time. A fire on board a vessel is highly dangerous and should always be avoided if possible. If a car was the cause of the fire, additional safety measures should be implemented on these types of vessel to potentially save the lives of the crew.
HWR_14 5y ago
The question isn't "can the ship support continuous telemetry" but "does it generate more value than it costs". And I'm not sure it does. Also, since the crew survived, why are they so concerned to get the voice recorder? Is it just because of the recorded alarm information, and if so why keep referring to it as a voice recorder and not a black box.
- jhugo 5y ago
  The recorder contains alarms and other data as well as the conversations on the bridge. As I understand it, they're like an aviation CVR and FDR but combined. Just like with aircraft accidents, the conversations can provide as much (or sometimes more) value as the data. It gives you insight into decision making, details that may not be recorded in the data ("I was just in area XYZ and I saw sparks coming out of one of the vehicles"), etc.
  - bornfreddy 5y ago
    Curious - why is this recorder not a floating device (which broadcasts its position) so that it could be retrieved easily? It's not like it needs to record the ship's descent to the bottom. Or is the primary function of this device unrelated to sinking?
    - rob74 5y ago
      I'm not an expert here, but yes, there are a lot of incidents and accidents that need to be investigated that don't involve the ship sinking (remember the Ever Given?). Plus, having a device installed in some kind of floating pod which detaches automatically when the ship sinks requires a lot of extra equipment, it has to be on the outside, so exposed to salt water and corrosion, etc.
    - donthellbanme 5y ago
      I believe all ships have a transponder. Russian criminals were stealing rich boys million dollar yachts a few years ago. They would board the ships when the skeleton crew was off the ship. They would take the transponder, and put in model hobby ships. The owner, and authorities thought their yacht was exactly where they left it. The Russian thieves would take the yachts back to Russia. (I thought is was clever. They stole millions of dollars in terms of yachts, and were eventually caught buy Interpol.
TaylorAlexander 5y ago
Especially with Starlink allowing roaming mode these days, though I wouldn’t expect them to pick up on that tech by now. Also hello I think I rode your self balancing scooter at robo games in 2005. Or maybe you just showed it to me. Your web pages with details of your scooter projects were great inspiration to me as I went through college in anticipation of my future career in robotics (which is now going great). I’ve actually got a clip of that 2005 Robo Games on my YouTube channel if you want a bit of nostalgia. I’m the blonde kid talking about the art bots! https://youtu.be/J2R-TlBomnQ https://youtu.be/J2R-TlBomnQ

flimflamm 5y ago

Yes

montanalow 5y ago

This article is pure speculation by an insurance company that isn’t involved, and admit they have no idea what happened. FUD.

jhugo 5y ago
They're providing background, which they have more than enough relevant expertise to provide. I found it a useful perspective; in particular an un-connected party can often speak more freely about issues. What exactly did you identify as FUD in this article?
topspin 5y ago
> speculation by an insurance company Speculation about risk is literally what insurance companies do; how they determine the terms of insurance. I learned a lot from this. One, shipping is pretty fly-by-night. Operators are winging it and trusting to luck in a lot of cases; failing to secure cargo for expediency for example. That's more corroboration than new knowledge. Two, fires are common on cargo ships: 14 times a year some cargo ship starts burning for some reason, car carriers being among the more frequent. Small fires that are quickly contained aren't included in that figure because they don't get reported. Three, car carrying ships aren't prepared to deal with cascading lithium battery fires. They can handle ICE fires but haven't yet adapted to the electric vehicles they're actually starting to carry in quantity. Four, the people that have to analyze the risks involved because they're liable for the costs are more candid about electric car fires; they say straight up that "lithium-ion batteries—they can ignite a lot more vigorously as compared to any other cars" and "a high impact on these cars and a lithium-ion battery can ignite them." A refreshing change from the obligatory handwaving and cognitive dissonance one gets at all other times. In electronics there is the concept of a bathtub curve. The frequency of component failure is high when the components are new. The frequency decreases afterwards and later increases again with old age. Applied to cargo ships full of electric cars with millions of brand new battery cells, obviously the risk that some battery will ignite and sink the ship has to be considered. And it will be considered -- if only by insurance companies -- whether electric car proponents like it or not.
- 5y ago

boundlessdreamz 5y ago

They say not securing the cars properly can cause impacts that cause fire. But these cars are impact tested for passenger safety. The only vulnerability for the battery pack will be a bottom impact which should not occur on Roll on-Roll Off Carrier. Ships do need to adapt their firefighting process for Lithium-Ion batteries. But I'm not convinced about impacts causing fire.

Ekaros 5y ago
Initial manufacturing defects are likely a decent cause. And you only need one in ten or hundred thousand to still have issues if such can affect other vehicles tightly packed around.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  One way in which battery packs catch fire: initial weld looks good and passes inspection but turns out to be faulty after all. It disconnects, then the pack i s charged (this should not happen to cars intended for overseas transport), vibration causes the bad connection to temporarily make contact, then the current welds the contact more solidly and large amounts of current start to flow from the charged cells into the one uncharged cell. Depending on pack geometry this can be 20:1 without any kind of protection mechanism in between. The one cell then catches fire, which in turn can set off the cells around it. This is why per-cell fusing is a thing in newer designs and why weld quality is super important during manufacture.
TheSpiceIsLife 5y ago
There's a couple videos on YouTube of vehicles on a carrier ship where the vehicles are bash around a fiar bit beyond what might happen in a passenger safety impact test. This one shows the result of a ship passing nearby a Category 3 hurricane and teh aftermath https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7EqGzO_qsc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7EqGzO_qsc
- terom 5y ago
  My parents had their car parked right behind a caravan with a bike rack on the back - they didn't notice anything when driving off the ship, and so it was kinda too late to do anything about it by the time they noticed the impact damage to their car's hood from the bike rack bouncing up and down. No risk of that happening here >:D

mirekrusin 5y ago

Can they ship them without batteries?

speedgoose 5y ago
It would not be cost effective and more and more cars do not have removable batteries.
rocqua 5y ago
I think that to do the actual 'ro-ro' (roll on roll off) they are shipping the cars with a decent bit of charge in the battery for the roll-off stage. It would probably help a lot to ship them with less charge.
jhugo 5y ago
Sure, but then you'll have to ship the batteries separately and those battery ships will have the same concerns but multiplied due to higher density.
- pm90 5y ago
  thats where specialization comes in. its why oil/lng tankers don’t catch fire all the time
megablast 5y ago
Yes. Then when they put the batteries back in they can claim they were made in the USA.

throwaway290 5y ago

Tangentially, I wonder about the environmental impacts of a container full of large Li-ion batteries, such as those found in electric cars, lost in the sea. Cargo ships are known to dump containers* (and oil**, incidentally) into oceans. * https://therevelator.org/container-ship-accidents/ https://therevelator.org/container-ship-accidents/ ** https://www.dw.com/en/exclusive-cargo-ships-dumping-oil-into-the-sea-go-unpunished/a-61201989 https://www.dw.com/en/exclusive-cargo-ships-dumping-oil-into...

cratermoon 5y ago

Is it currently safe to ship mass numbers of electric cars, under the current safety standards? Probably not. Should those standards and expectations be updated and refined to address the changing nature of hazardous cargo? Absolutely.

amaajemyfren 5y ago

Fuel literally burns and it is carried by ship - I believe there is a way to safely ferry them in ships.

csunbird 5y ago
Fuel is also carried by special ships with extra precautions, but electric cars are carried just like normal cars without any extra safety.
- amaajemyfren 5y ago
  So you learn no? I'm sure the way fuel was carried during World War 1 is not the way the US Military carries it now. Special ships? That probably depends on the economics. If the Electric Car Industry makes it worth a shippers while - Someone will invest in a special purpose vehicle. So now we are at the first stages of this - in time - if the industry succeeds - the money will come.
minedwiz 5y ago
To be fair, many (all?) of these ships are burning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_fuel_oil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_fuel_oil, which is not at all like petrol in that it requires preheating and atomisation to burn.
- amaajemyfren 5y ago
  Thanks for this. It is some really nasty stuff.
- mlindner 5y ago
  Granted, but after it's pre-heated it burns quite well.
  - MertsA 5y ago
    It still doesn't burn well unless it's in a fine mist. Even just a puddle of diesel is actually quite difficult to get burning on its own without some other material as a wick of sorts. https://youtu.be/7nL10C7FSbE https://youtu.be/7nL10C7FSbE Great practical demonstration of the different flammability characteristics of some common fuels. For the tar that a container ship burns, it's not going to be very volatile. Coal also burns quite well, but unless it's powdered, good luck trying to ignite some with just a match.

blenderdt 5y ago

This article is not about if EVs are safe. It's about the fact that putting out a fire when batteries are involved is hard. Every week there is a fire on a cargo ship. Most are not caused by the cargo. But when the cargo catches fire you want to be able to put it out before the whole ships turns into scrap.

mlindner 5y ago
EVs catch fire drastically less than combustion fueled vehicles because they don't involve explosive materials. Also we ship giant ships full of oil and gas all over the world every single day which is vastly more combustible than batteries.
- kec 5y ago
  ICE vehicles aren't filled with fuel when shipped, and oil and gas both have to aerosolize in an oxygen rich environment before ignition is possible. Batteries just have to get hot, and that can occur from simple mechanical damage.
  - KennyBlanken 5y ago
    ICE vehicles contain enough gas to be driven around at the plant lots, in/out of autocars (rail cars that carry cars), around at port lots, on and off ships, and so on. "Simple mechanical damage" to the battery in an EV is a lot harder than you think. The packs are designed to remain intact in crashes...
- IshKebab 5y ago
  Oil and gas require oxygen to burn.
  - Ekaros 5y ago
    And heat. And you know what is around ships? Near infinite amount of easily handled high heat capacity coolant. Okay, usually the stuff is pretty contaminated, but some cleaning and resurfacing is better than everything staying burning.

riaandewit 5y ago

So, don’t ship cars then. Tweak cities for micro mobility and walking. Also: a couple of burned and sunk ships is a much cheaper price to pay than climate change. If the cost of the odd lithium fire is a lot, wait till you factor in the costs of the emissions of an ICE over the vehicle lifetime. This reeks of FUD during the death throes of the petrochemical industry, tbh.

robocat 5y ago

Can the risks of battery fires be deeply reduced if the batteries have a very low charge when transported?

elihu 5y ago
Probably to some extent, but there are limits. If the charge is too low it damages the battery, and self-discharge is a thing. So, if you're moving cars with a low charge you're under a self-imposed time limit to get them where they need to go and recharged before their cell voltages drop below their normal operating range.
hedora 5y ago
My car's manual says storing it at under 80% charge for more than a few weeks is a fire hazard. It's about five years old. If I remember right, lithium ion batteries explode if over discharged. I have no idea why self discharge doesn't cause old forgotten laptops to routinely catch fire.

jrockway 5y ago

Do lithium batteries contain an oxidizer? Is an inert atmosphere enough?

NickNameNick 5y ago
I think that's inherent in the definition of a chemical battery. Sustaining an electrical charge difference across the poles of the cell by undergoing a chemical reaction. For the common NMC batteries used in cars, I think the other metals start as oxides, which get reduced to oxidise the lithium. In any case, I doubt that an inert atmosphere would help much. A better approach might be to have high-capacity water pipes pre-plumbed to allow flood cooling of the affected cars. Possibly from underneath.

mytailorisrich 5y ago

This boils down to safety of battery EVs. Indeed, soon they will be everywhere. Think not only of cargo ships but of traffic, rows of parked cars, whole carparks, etc. In this case, the change is that was probably considered an inert cargo (cars) will now have be considered a potentially hazardous cargo perhaps requiring extra safety measures.

_ph_ 5y ago
It might simply boil down on learning how to safely treat EVs. As the article points out, currently they are shipped like combustion engined vehicles and so far there is no differentiation in treatment. Combustion engined vehicles became relatively safe to handle by about 100 years of experience. Still, statistics point out that they catch fire more often than EVs. But that doesn't mean, one might not have to handle EVs slightly different when putting them on these ships. Like tying them down properly, adjusting the fire extinguishing facilities accordingly. And of course, battery technology itself and the engineering of BEVs will progress constantly.

lnsru 5y ago

Since the normal container ships often have many refrigerated containers and the crew manage to control their temperature. Maybe roro ship crews will get access to the battery temperature data and will be able to prepare suspicious cars for offloading straight into ocean. Loosing few cars is probably better than whole shop with thousand cars.

Ekaros 5y ago
That would affect capacity quite badly. My understanding is that these big roro ships really don't have room or height to maneuverer things around. Instead anything is backed as tightly as possible.

Animats 5y ago

I'm not too happy about very large lithium ion batteries as a mass market product in low-end vehicles. Lithium iron phosphate, which doesn't have the thermal runaway problem but stores less energy per kilogram, may be more appropriate there. Both BYD and Tesla are going that route at the low end. Light electric vehicles (bikes, scooters, skateboards) are now causing a sizable number of fires in NYC.[1] It's mostly a battery quality problem, apparently. FDNY reported 28 battery fires in 2019, 44 in 2020, and 104 in 2021. Bike and scooter shop fires tend to result in multiple batteries cooking off. One thing would stop much of this: making Amazon criminally responsible for selling power electrical devices which do not have verifiable UL certification. [1] https://www.firerescue1.com/fdny/articles/fdny-massive-fire-that-injured-2-ffs-was-sparked-by-e-bike-battery-Kj742urKFV3V5uR0 https://www.firerescue1.com/fdny/articles/fdny-massive-fire-...

Reason077 5y ago
Elon Musk has said that he believes a significant portion of the industry will move to LFP (Lithium iron phosphate) chemistry due to its lower cost, fewer supply constraints, and better safety and stability properties. It was recently reported that Ford is working on LFP packs for their Mustang and F-150 Lightning EVs.
- moffkalast 5y ago
  So they say, but the main gripe of switching to EVs has always been their too small range. Your average Li-ion 21700 cell has a capacity of 4-5Ah, whereas one with an LFP chemistry only gets 2-3Ah. That's almost a 50 % reduction in spatial density, not to mention their abysmal C rating. Perhaps they would fit for PHEV usage, but for pure EVs they would be rather shite imo.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - Reason077 5y ago
    The standard range Tesla Model 3 says otherwise. They’ve been using LFP for a while now and it actually has longer range than it’s non-LFP predecessor, albeit with somewhat increased weight. Charge rate on modern, well-managed LFP cells is not abysmal. The LFP Model 3 SR gets excellent charging speeds.

oxplot 5y ago

> As the world quickly switches to electric cars, how are we going to get them from factories to showrooms, especially when they have to cross oceans? Pick the phone up and call Tesla logistics department. They’ll fill you right in.

hedora 5y ago
Why do you think Musk has put so much time and money into the Boring Company? Everyone knows EVs are powered by the disembodied souls of the damned. Of course they can't cross over salt water!

kkfx 5y ago

I think it's not much different than shipping refined petrol or LPG... The main issue is always the need of transports, unless we can scale toward mass distributed small productions to built as much as possible locally so to avoid the scale of eventual accidents, not much differently than the concept of coming back from big ships to smaller one for petrol, hyper-giant plane trend to smaller ones etc Accidents/incidents can always happen but at smaller scale means smaller issues...

aurizon 5y ago

A ship at sea can have a cloud repository of data etc, immediately available, not 10,000 feet underwater as well as no data loss. Good job for a mobile Starlink the monthly cost is trivial compared with the annual budget

sunstone 5y ago

If it's safe to ship tons of LNG on big ships there's almost certainly a way to ship batteries safely. It might take a few 'incidents' though before best practise becomes clear.

blamazon 5y ago
In a similar direction, I was thinking of the zillions of gallons of petroleum products that have accidentally ended up in ecosystems during transport. [1]: https://gcaptain.com/a-short-list-of-major-oil-spills-from-ships/ https://gcaptain.com/a-short-list-of-major-oil-spills-from-s...

hedora 5y ago

Say we burn and sink ten of these barges per year out on the open ocean. How much environmental damage could that possibly cause vs. acidification from dissolved CO2? (It would be good to reduce the number of barges that sink and also address global warming, of course!)

lizardactivist 5y ago

I say it's safe. Volkswagen group should definitely ship more cars on big ships, and if their ship catches fire again, then they should stop beating about and call it what it at that point is: sabotage.

dr-detroit 5y ago
they would need to expand on their 4% ev market share to have the need to do that
- lizardactivist 5y ago
  "they would need to expand on their 4% ev market share to have the need to do that" Perhaps there are forces working to ensure they don't succeed in that.

almost_usual 5y ago

Has there been a large earthquake yet in an EV dense area? That will be interesting.

_8j50 5y ago

One more reason to make car batteries replacable instead of rechargable only.