Burning Porsches on the Felicity Ace ship prove electric car batteries are a fire hazard for sea transport

[Redaktion]

Firefighting efforts to quell the flames on the burning Felicity Ace ship full of luxury vehicles are complicated by the fact that electric car battery fire can't be easily put out with water. The SMIT Salvage company hired to save the burning ship says they've never had a case like that before due precisely to the electric cars on board.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Burning-Porsches-on-the-Felicity-Ace-ship-prove-electric-car-batteries-are-a-fire-hazard-for-sea-transport.602702.0.html

[vertigo]

They should build special compartments or containers with halon systems and/or that can be deep-sixed in the event of fire.

This has to be great for the environment, not to mention the huge financial cost of the loss of all those cars and other cargo and the damage to the ship. I wonder what the net effect so far is between reduced emissions from the cars vs increased emissions elsewhere, increased waste both in production and disposal of the batteries as well as in the disposal of entire cars for a "simple" bad battery that's prohibitively expensive to replace, and the large amounts of wasted water dealing with the fires, especially in drought areas. People seem to be oblivious to the fact nothing is free; there's always a balance, a different cost, and that all has to be weighed.

[kek]

I hope this sets a precedent and the course gets fixed.

We need more efficient gas oil motors, not some shitty EV car that has more cons than pros.

Honda and Toyota are actually moving forward with a proper solution, while everyone else is playing at marketing and scamming.

[EV Boy]

Vertigo I know you don't want to hear this but we just cannot keep burning fossil fuels , the damage to the environment just keeps increasing. I got an EV because leading up to my retirement I was seeing increasing numbers of patients especially children with asthma and other breathing difficulties. EVs offer a safe way forward , it is early days and we have lessons to learn just like we did in the early fossil fuel days.

[Hunter2020]

Lol, these cars are using some cheap EV batteries not made by BYD.  BYD blade batteries never catch on fire!!

[RUMcajz]

no one in green media is talking what they did with that toxic induced water from firefighting those batteries, but we all know it finnished in ocean.

god bless ecology.

[Umm]

Umm why not toss them in Ocean turn them into reefs lol I'm joking

[vertigo]

Vertigo I know you don't want to hear this but we just cannot keep burning fossil fuels , the damage to the environment just keeps increasing. I got an EV because leading up to my retirement I was seeing increasing numbers of patients especially children with asthma and other breathing difficulties. EVs offer a safe way forward , it is early days and we have lessons to learn just like we did in the early fossil fuel days.

I realize this is pretty old, but just wanted to clarify. For the record, I'm not against EVs, and I fully believe we need to reduce/eliminate fossil fuel consumption, for many reasons (though I question how much the increase in asthma, etc is due to that vs other causes, e.g. overly clean environments combined with children spending more time in those environments vs outside). I just think we're making a lot of mistakes we don't need to be making. We're rushing into it without taking the time to fully think things through (granted, it could be argued we don't have that time), we're focusing on the positives and largely ignoring the negatives, and, IMO, EVs are, for many reasons, not (yet) that much better, not as much as people believe, but they're being pushed for commercial and political reasons. I'm sure in 10-20 years, or maybe sooner, we'll be where we need to be, and a lot of it is just necessary growing pains, but I feel a lot of them are not necessary if we were to just take a step back and think things through more, and I question if we're doing more harm than good. After all, what good is clean air if we manage to destroy our water?

[_MT_]

I just think we're making a lot of mistakes we don't need to be making. We're rushing into it without taking the time to fully think things through

Indeed. Currently, EVs might not be much better or might be even worse. It's a complex subject. In a modern car, tailpipe emissions pale in comparison to emissions from tyre wear AFAIK. And because EVs are generally heavier and they can accelerate strongly, they have higher tyre wear emissions, meaning they can actually pollute more even locally. Those particles are harmful as they are laced with harmful chemicals. I imagine this is going to be the next area of regulation as tyre compound makes a big difference and we need to get rid of the most polluting compounds. Similarly, battery manufacture is problematic, it pollutes and damages environment. There are huge embodied emissions in a battery pack. And people buying bigger battery than they can properly utilize out of convenience only makes the problem worse. You might end up with an electric car that starts saving emissions only after driving half a million kilometres. It doesn't have to be this way. But we better solve problems such as these before EVs became dominant. Or benefits are going to be largely imaginary.

Whatever we do, it has to be circular. We have to stop dumping by-products into the environment. Whatever we dump has to be recovered. And while we can produce synthetic fuels, it's very energy intensive and therefore inefficient. It might be better to just use raw electricity. But then we have to ensure that our storage system for electricity has small footprint. It's essentially a competition between the footprint of generation and storage. And the footprint of storage largely depends on utilization. That is, in the end, true for the entire car. Underutilization is wasteful.

[_MT_]

What politicians don't like to say is that if you are serious about protecting the environment, you have to be frugal. History teaches us that if you lower the price of something, people consume more of it. That's the definition of luxury. Essentials don't behave this way. I think it was Juncker who said something along the lines of: we know what has to be done, we just haven't figured out how to get re-elected afterwards.

So, while it's admirable to reduce the impact of any single item, it's also important to reduce the overall consumption. Otherwise, we will squander whatever we save. Who is to say what lever of extra, unnecessary damage is acceptable and who gets to inflict it? It's hard to read. It's hard to write for me as well. But you can't escape it.

[vertigo]

And because EVs are generally heavier and they can accelerate strongly,

And this brings up another point: since they have such high performance and most people tend to think of them as using green energy, etc, this almost certainly means many EV drivers likely make much more liberal use of that performance, which in turn uses more electricity and perhaps the same or more fossil fuels in the end. My main point in the EV argument, as with most other things, is that there are many facets that need to be considered and are almost always ignored by most people.

So, while it's admirable to reduce the impact of any single item

And this is why the focus on recycling by so many self-proclaimed environmentalists, while they often don't even mention the other two, IMO much more important, R's (and also often don't live by them, either, buying tons of stuff that causes tons of waste but, hey, at least they recycle some of that waste) bothers me.