Nobody Signed Up for This New Trend

The 23 crew members of the Freemantle Highway had signed up for a thirty-day ride around the Cape of Good Hope and across the Indian Ocean. I imagine that on July 26th, many of them were likely asleep, some playing video games, some reading, many tending to the daily duties in the engine room, kitchen, or on the bridge.?

Then, there was a fire alarm.

Fires are uncommon on car carriers. In fact, there were only seven major incidents in car carriers from 2002 – 2021 , and none of them were fires. In the last 18 months, however, there have been three car carrier fires, two of which were confirmed to involve electric vehicles.

When the fire alarm went off notifying the crew, many of those brave sailors responded to try to combat the fire. The unfortunate result was that one of them had died, and the captain and first mate were burned badly enough that they had to remain in the hospital after the others were released. Of the 23 sailors, 22 lived and 20 escaped with only minor injuries. The ship burned at sea, crewless, for many days while it was both protected and the fire combatted by neighboring ships. At risk was 1,600 tons of heavy fuel oil and 200 tons of diesel fuel—enough to cause an environmental disaster.?

The Size of the Problem Today

In 2022, the import/export of cars amounted to about $750 billion . Equating to around 21 million vehicles, or about 4,000 car carrier voyages with an average cargo of 5,000 vehicles. During that time, only three major incidents had been caused by fire, so about 2 per year. However, in 2022, there were 13 fires on car carriers . It’s unclear how many of those involved electric vehicles beyond the two mentioned.

However, during the previous 20 years combined, there were exactly zero major incidents concerning fires.

Electric vehicles amount to about 10% of the global vehicle market. If the import/export is about the same ratio, then there were about 2 million electric vehicles transported. This would mean that 1 in 1 million would catch fire at sea, igniting the rest of the vehicles on the ship. So, with a cargo ship of 5,000 cars, 10,000 of 2 million would catch fire, or around 0.5%. Double the cost to account for the cost of the ship, and you have a 1% cost to the car companies due to the increase in fire probability for transporting electric vehicles—something that could perhaps be viewed as an acceptable risk by some automotive executives.?

1 in 1 million electric vehicles catch fire each year during sea transport, amounting to a 1% cost, but just of those transported by sea, which is only 20%, so in actuality, it is a 0.2% cost.

But we also know that electric vehicles catch fire, with about 25 out of every 100,000 electric vehicles catching fire each year , or in the past year, about 4,125 electric vehicles catching fire.?

25 in 100,000 electric vehicles catch fire each year in use, amounting to a 0.025% cost.

These numbers probably amount to an acceptable risk among the executives who are trying to enact a monumental change in the giant automotive industry.?

The Risk for Tomorrow

I put those numbers in percentages for a reason: they scale. When the electric vehicle market is 10x as big as it is now, it will still be a 0.2% plus 0.025% cost. And if the battery industry improves safety, which it will, then those number will only come down.

As the fraction of vehicles on car carriers becomes more and more electric, how many of the “non-major” fire incidents on car carriers will become major incidents because of the intensity of the flames, and the rapidity of igniting neighboring vehicles? This could magnify the number of major incidents beyond the 20 predicted above.

There is the additional risk of 20 car carriers burning every year, risking the spillage of 36,000 tons of shipping fuel, or about 12 million gallons, the equivalent of the Exxon Valdez spillage risked every year . The Exxon Valdez spill killed an estimated 250,000 sea birds, 3000 sea mammals and 22 killer whales.

Summary

I’m not wise enough to try to compare the greenhouse gas savings—and benefit to the planet of having a fleet of electric vehicles replace ICE vehicles—to the risk of spilling some fraction of 12 million gallons of fuel oil at sea every year, in addition to relatively modest numbers of lives that will be lost in the ships.?

However, I am wise enough to know that working on technology to prevent the spilling of some fraction of 12 million gallons of fuel oil every year is a task worth pursuing, in addition to the other obvious benefits of safe batteries.

As many of you know, Soteria has a technology that can make batteries much safer, reducing the probability of a fire by more than 90%. We’ve also formed a consortium of industry leaders, now over 125 companies, who are working together to identify the problems and solutions that can bring all of these numbers and probabilities down. If your company would like to participate in these efforts, please reach out to me via LinkedIn or at [email protected] .

In addition, we are just launching a crowdfunding campaign to help provide resources for this effort. If you’d like to learn more about your opportunity to invest in this important cause, please visit https://www.startengine.com/offering/soteria .