BERLIN/LISBON — A ship carrying round 4,000 automobiles — together with Volkswagens, Porsches, Audis, Bentleys and Lamborghinis — that caught hearth close to the coast of the Azores will probably be towed to a different European nation or the Bahamas, the captain of the closest port advised Reuters on Friday.
Lithium-ion batteries within the EVs on board have caught hearth and the blaze requires specialist gear to extinguish, captain Joao Mendes Cabecas of the port of Hortas stated.
It was not clear whether or not the batteries first sparked the hearth.
“The ship is burning from one finish to the opposite… every part is on hearth about 5 meters above the water line,” Cabeças stated.
Towing boats had been on route from Gibraltar and the Netherlands, with three because of arrive by Wednesday, Cabecas stated. He added the vessel couldn’t be towed to the Azores as a result of it was so huge it might block commerce on the port.
U.S. economist Patrick Anderson estimated the preliminary loss may very well be $255 million.
“A fast estimate, assuming that the ship was solely partially full (or {that a} portion of the cargo is salvaged undamaged), is that there’s no less than $255 million or extra in misplaced automobiles, plus many hundreds of thousands in salvage prices on high of that, and downstream losses in auto dealerships. It may very well be extra,” Anderson stated in an emailed assertion on Friday.
A 16-person salvage crew from Smit Salvage, owned by Dutch marine engineer Boskalis, was despatched to the ship to assist management the flames, Boskalis stated.
The Panama-flagged ship, owned by Snowscape Automotive Carriers SA and managed by Mitsui O.S.Ok. Strains Ltd., was travelling from Emden, Germany — the place Volkswagen has a manufacturing facility — to Davisville, R.I., based mostly on the Maritime Visitors web site. Davisville is a port about 70 miles south of Boston.
The 22 crew members on board had been evacuated on Wednesday, when the hearth broke out, with nobody damage, Portugal’s navy stated in a press release.
Round 1,100 Porsches and 189 Bentleys had been on board, spokespeople for the automotive manufacturers stated. Audi, one other Volkswagen model, confirmed a few of its automobiles had been additionally on the ship however didn’t state what number of.
An inner e-mail from Volkswagen’s U.S. operations revealed there have been 3,965 Volkswagen Group automobiles aboard the ship.
Greater than 100 of these vehicles had been headed for the Port of Houston in Texas, with GTI, Golf R, and ID.4 fashions deemed to be in danger, in keeping with the e-mail. The auto trade is already combating provide points, together with pandemic-related staffing woes and the worldwide chip scarcity.
YouTuber Matt Farah, whose automotive overview channel “The Smoking Tire” has greater than one million followers, stated on Twitter he was contacted by a automotive vendor who stated the Porsche he ordered was aboard the ship.
“My automotive is now adrift, probably on hearth, in the course of the ocean,” Farah tweeted.
It’s not the primary time the producer has misplaced merchandise at sea. When the Grande America caught hearth and sank in 2019, greater than 2,000 luxurious vehicles, together with Audis and Porsches, sank with it.
A spokesperson for Lamborghini’s U.S. operation declined to touch upon the variety of vehicles the corporate had on board or which fashions had been affected, however stated that they’re involved with the transport firm to get extra details about the incident.
Felicity Ace is roughly the scale of three soccer fields.
Reuters, Bloomberg and Philip Nussel from Automotive Information contributed to this report.