Disaster Ship Carrying EVs Abandoned in Pacific After Catching Fire - A ship carrying about 3,000 cars to Mexico was abandoned in the middle of the Pacific Ocean after catching fire Tuesday.

Car-carrying ship Morning Midas in 2020.
Photographer: Sam Croft/MarineTraffic

A ship carrying about 3,000 cars to Mexico was abandoned in the middle of the Pacific Ocean after catching fire Tuesday.

Smoke was first seen coming from a deck on the Morning Midas that was carrying electric vehicles, the ship’s manager Zodiac Maritime said in a statement. It has about 800 EVs on board.

The crew initiated firefighting procedures but the blaze could not be brought under control, it added.

The US Coast Guard evacuated all 22 crew members, transferring them to a nearby merchant ship. The Coast Guard said earlier it was sending aircrews and a vessel toward the ship where crew had been actively fighting a blaze.

Zodiac confirmed that responders are being deployed to support salvage and firefighting operations. The ship departed the Chinese port of Yantai on May 26.


Morning Midas in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
Source: Bloomberg

Car-carrying ships haul thousands of vehicles at a time across the world’s oceans.

In recent years, there have been a handful of significant blazes involving vessels hauling electric vehicles, prompting concerns that the batteries inside those cars can catch light and lead to significant disasters.

Such incidents can have major ramifications for the companies that make the cars and shipowners alike, as well as for their insurers.

In 2022, a vessel carrying about 4,000 vehicles caught fire in the Atlantic and ended up sinking despite efforts to tow it to safety.

Shipowners have also taken steps to try and manage the safety risks involved in hauling electric vehicles.

Last year, a key safety group published guidelines on how to deal with fires on board the vessels.

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[Clotso Coof]

The US Coast Guard evacuated all 22 crew members

I wonder how much this cost the US taxpayers? This was outside US waters, and was a non-US flagged ship going from China to Mexico.

I'm glad the sailors didn't die, but I'm tired of my tax money being used to fix the world's problems.

 

[Agamemnon Busmalis]

I wonder how much this cost the US taxpayers? This was outside US waters, and was a non-US flagged ship going from China to Mexico.

I'm glad the sailors didn't die, but I'm tired of my tax money being used to fix the world's problems.

I believe the ship was in US territorial waters, the Aleutian Islands expand pretty far into the northern Pacific.

There's also maritime treaties about this kind of thing, it's beneficial to the US to help out a ship in distress from another country when it can as it will be reciprocated by other parties to the treaty if a US ship is in distress. Well worth the money.

 

[BelUwUga]

I thought we were going to have battery swapping capability at some point? That way consumers could "fill up" in just minutes, not hours.

Israeli company tried it and went bankrupt. @neverendingmidi is on the right track towards a lot of the practical problems they faced. Notable difference is the company owned the batteries, not the car owner. This lead to a fun circumstance:

Under Better Place's business model, the company owned the Fluence Z.E. batteries, so the court liquidator would have to decide what to do with customers who do not have ownership of the battery and risk being left with a useless car.

 

[Clotso Coof]

I believe the ship was in US territorial waters,

Wow, I didn't know our waters spread that far out into the ocean. Makes sense, then.

Good point about the international treaties. But I have to wonder how many countries could even do a mid-ocean rescue from a burning cargo ship. So many of our treaties say other countries will also back us up, but then they can't really do much to help us. It become more US = world police. Thank god Trump is starting to pull back from some of that.

 

[Google.com]

Wow, I didn't know our waters spread that far out into the ocean. Makes sense, then.

Good point about the international treaties. But I have to wonder how many countries could even do a mid-ocean rescue from a burning cargo ship. So many of our treaties say other countries will also back us up, but then they can't really do much to help us. It become more US = world police. Thank god Trump is starting to pull back from some of that.

It wasn't even only the US coast guard who was assisting the Cosco Hellas(Chinese company) picked up the life boat and has been trailing the ship to assist rescuers. Also, I don't think the US tax payers would be happy if we ignored a ship full of toxic pollutants on fire and just let dump poison into the water and drift into US territory as it sinks and the crew burns to death.

 

[Disdainer of the Plebs]

If there's a corner Chinks can cut, they're gonna.

I'm a bit surprised we don't see even more of this kind of thing.

A few of these things cook off every week, it’s just the press are all shilibs and sweep the fires under the rug unless they’re too destructive to ignore. There’s a reason you can’t ship lithium ion batteries by air anymore.

 

[Otterly]

I have a recurring nightmare about this happening on a passenger ferry.

 

[Clotso Coof]

I don't think the US tax payers would be happy if we ignored a ship full of toxic pollutants on fire and just let dump poison into the water

Are we planning to put out the fire? Isn't it going to burn until it sinks? I don't know much about cargo ships with fires burning that hot. EV fires are notoriously difficult to put out cause they burn so hot and for so long.

 

[Crex Crex]

I wonder how much this cost the US taxpayers? This was outside US waters, and was a non-US flagged ship going from China to Mexico.

I'm glad the sailors didn't die, but I'm tired of my tax money being used to fix the world's problems.

I feel like there is a difference between wasting money on playing world police and following the well known and time-honoured law of the sea that you have to assist stricken vessels.

I have a recurring nightmare about this happening on a passenger ferry.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_Moby_Prince

 

[Otterly]

The nightmare I have is about northern waters, it’s quite detailed. EVs are a plague

 

[Google.com]

Are we planning to put out the fire? Isn't it going to burn until it sinks? I don't know much about cargo ships with fires burning that hot. EV fires are notoriously difficult to put out cause they burn so hot and for so long.

The coast guard is letting it burn but standing by in case they need to do anything, the company that owns the ship is sending salvage crews and fire fighting equipment but it will take 4 days. Source Source 2

 

[RodgerDodger]

I wonder how much this cost the US taxpayers? This was outside US waters, and was a non-US flagged ship going from China to Mexico.

I'm glad the sailors didn't die, but I'm tired of my tax money being used to fix the world's problems.

It was passing through the US's area of economic interest. So an area covered by the USCG out of Alaska. Either way USCG would be the closest responder to where it was while crossing the Northern arc of the Pacific.

 

[Mr. Zed da Robot Poon Fed]

Funnily enough, David Zhang has been railing in Chinese EVs lately.

 

[BradeRunna]

I don't know a ship just constantly sailing around everywhere with flames shooting out of it sounds pretty metal.

 

[reptile baht spaniard rid]

Are we planning to put out the fire? Isn't it going to burn until it sinks? I don't know much about cargo ships with fires burning that hot. EV fires are notoriously difficult to put out cause they burn so hot and for so long.

those ships are fucking massive - it's quite likely that it would eventually burn out but still be floating just fine, adrift forever until the hull finally rotted through

 

[JosephStalin]

those ships are fucking massive - it's quite likely that it would eventually burn out but still be floating just fine, adrift forever until the hull finally rotted through

Would it make sense for one of our subs to sink it with torpedoes?

 

[Disdainer of the Plebs]

Are we planning to put out the fire? Isn't it going to burn until it sinks? I don't know much about cargo ships with fires burning that hot. EV fires are notoriously difficult to put out cause they burn so hot and for so long.

Don’t forget the extremely poisonous gasses!

 

[reptile baht spaniard rid]

Would it make sense for one of our subs to sink it with torpedoes?

Only if it becomes a danger to navigation or something, otherwise even burnt out and dead it's worth something to someone, they'll drag it somewhere and feast on the corpse.

 

[TowinKarz]

I wonder how much this cost the US taxpayers? This was outside US waters, and was a non-US flagged ship going from China to Mexico.

I'm glad the sailors didn't die, but I'm tired of my tax money being used to fix the world's problems.

Custom of the seas is that if you receive a distress call? You answer it until and unless told help is no longer needed. Flag and ship be damned.

It really is a touching thing about humanity that pretty much everyone drops what they're doing when a ship is in peril... like some hard-coded memory that everyone still has in a back file of their lizard brain from when we as a species hit the high seas and it's just somehow instinctually known that drowning is no way to go for anyone.

I don't know a ship just constantly sailing around everywhere with flames shooting out of it sounds pretty metal.

The Frying Dutchman.

 

[RodgerDodger]

The coast guard is letting it burn but standing by in case they need to do anything, the company that owns the ship is sending salvage crews and fire fighting equipment but it will take 4 days. Source Source 2

It's an EV fire. There is literally nothing they can do to put it out other than sink the ship. Which will ikely happen on its own.