The Fremantle Freeway, the automotive provider ship that caught hearth off the Dutch coast final week, may generate a cargo lack of greater than $330 million, stated Patrick Anderson, an economist with Anderson Financial Group.
“It does seem after a number of days of fireside that it’s probably that all the automobiles are a complete loss and be very troublesome to salvage any automobiles out of this,” he stated. “Definitely no automobile that endured that fireplace injury and water injury will be bought as new in america.”
Anderson, whose agency is predicated in East Lansing, Michigan, referenced the Felicity Ace hearth in 2022, when he referred to as for a security assessment of business automotive carriers.
The Felicity Ace was carrying about 4,000 automobiles, together with Volkswagens, Porsches, Audis, Bentleys and Lamborghinis — a few of them electrical with lithium ion batteries — when it caught hearth and sank within the Atlantic Ocean.
The hearth on the Panamanian-registered Fremantle Freeway, which was carrying new automobiles, resulted within the demise of a crew member and the damage of seven others who jumped overboard to flee the flames.
Constitution firm Okay Line stated Friday there have been 3,783 automobiles on board the ship — together with 498 battery electrics, considerably greater than the 25 initially reported. BMW and Mercedes-Benz stated that they had automobiles among the many cargo aboard the ship.
The provider has been towed to a location away from delivery lanes as a part of salvage operations, the Dutch public works and water administration ministry stated Monday.
Laura Baucus, director of automotive and automotive provide chain practices at Detroit legislation agency Dykema Gossett, stated automotive provide chain delivery is changing into busier, making a possible hearth that rather more harmful.
“Vessels are rising in dimension, delivery routes are getting busier, ships are packed tighter and generally overloaded,” she stated. “In this sort of surroundings, if a fireplace breaks out, the whole cargo may be in danger in a short time.
“With the extraordinary quantity of losses from a delivery vessel hearth of this magnitude, I anticipate quite a few restoration actions will likely be filed towards any probably liable particular person or firm,” Baucus stated. “I might not be shocked to see litigation involving environmental injury claims, too.”
Stated Anderson: “There must be a critical, speedy effort to take a look at security of those carriers which can be holding electrical automobiles, as a result of now we’ve a second half-billion-dollar loss, and tragically, we’ve lack of life, too.
“If the Felicity catastrophe did not spotlight that the transit system isn’t arrange for safely transporting EVs, actually the Fremantle Freeway has to try this.”
The losses of the Felicity Ace probably exceeded early estimates and have been probably as excessive or greater than $355 million.
The Felicity Ace cargo included 189 Bentleys carrying a median price ticket of about $300,000, in response to a Bentley spokeswoman on the time.