Shipment send ablaze off Dutch coast wearing just about 500 EVs

Lithium-ion batteries burn with two times the power of a regular fireplace and maritime officers and insurers say the trade has no longer stored up with the hazards.

An investigation has been introduced by means of the Panama Maritime Authority and the Netherlands is helping the inquiry, the Dutch Protection Board has stated.

There are so many hundred BMW and Little vehicles on board, in addition to kind of 300 Mercedes-Benz automobiles, representatives for the corporations stated.

Ford Motor, Stellantis, Renault and Nissan didn’t have any automobiles at the vessel, corporate spokespeople stated. Toyota stated it’s not going the automaker had shipment on board.

A Volkswagen spokesperson stated the corporate used to be actively investigating however used to be not able to handover additional knowledge. Tesla didn’t reply to a request for remark.

The 199-meter (653 feet) Fremantle, which continues to be burning, is drifting amongst islands about 17 km from the northernmost Dutch coast. It used to be at the method from Germany to Egypt.

The islands contain a part of the Wadden Sea, a immense department of tidal residences and marshland stretching alongside Germany and Denmark this is on UNESCO’s Global Heritage record.

The incident is harking back to a maritime emergency endmost month, when a shipment send that stuck fireplace within the Atlantic transporting kind of 4,000 VW automobiles to the U.S. sank in tough seas, regardless of efforts to tow it to protection then burning for greater than a day.

Bloomberg contributed to this document