On a bad day an EV can do $100 million dollars worth of damage

The bestselling Tesla EVs sold in Norway are coming from “over there” (I.e. China)

More and more Chinese EV brands are available on the market here and in the rest of Europe. (Good range, cutting edge technology, good quality and affordable price)

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In the two car carriers I worked, batteries were not disconnected routinely. In both ships, we loaded used and junk vehicles in the U.S. for the Middle East (early 2000s). Some were brought aboard by spearing them with forklifts. I was told they were mostly used for spare parts. We circumnavigated in both ships. I was 2nd Officer in both, and had quite the stack of charts to erase after arrival back in the States.

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as a retired marine surveyor i was quite knowledgeable of shipping cars in containers, batteries disconnected fuel tanks MT and wheels blocked up under the axels. we used to used poly pro line and spanish windless for securing along with wheel chocks and nylon straps to the chassi.
the concourse de elegance in Carmel California used to hire me to approve the load outs.
1936 Rolls Royce worth one million dolllars was my most expensive load as i recall.
Car thieves in san Francisco also used to ship by container. the car was on the ship withing 24 hours of the theft.
AH THE GOOD OLD DAYS!

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Excellent. I have some pics of horrible car stows in containers fm various surveying sources. HORRIBLE. But one must agree the quality of such stows depends on local stowage/ working culture/training/ custom. So one may expect perfection in Hamburg, LAX, NYK SFC RTM when in WAGADUGU in BUrkina Faso it may be far fm perfect. But perfect stows cost MONEY. + en expert surveyor service like You as an added substantial cost. Thx for Your valuable input Sir..

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I’ll try and dig out the pictures. as i recall as they were closing the doors to the container my career was flashing before me
i also did a Lamborghini for Marcos that was before the computers

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Maybe the Chinese have discovered “quality control”. The company I worked for opened a Chinese division. The first machine the Chinese built for us was a C-2500 open-width compactor, a fabric machine. Ours was like a “piece of art”. :grin: One-piece stainless steel guards, everything precision. The Chinese machine had guards pieced together like they were made out of scrap metal. After it was completed, it then had to be shipped to our US plant to make the POJ work. :laughing:

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I know I am stating the blooming obvious to all but the eco warriors.

It doesn’t matter a stuff how the fire starts, it’s how hard it is to put it out.

With ICE vehicles it is not easy but doable.

With EV s it’s almost impossible and that IMHO is the reason we are losing more and more car carriers.

Unfortunately until they ban the carriage of EV s this trend will continue

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I don’t know about C-2500 compactors, open mouth or otherwise, nor when you had this experience.

What I do know is the quality of ships and boats built in China has improved over the years. In China, like anywhere else, if you want quality it cost more.

For ships it is also a question of good building supervision. Today the most quality conscious shipowners build ships in China, so they must be doing something right, both the shipyards and the shipowners.

PS> As for EVs I can only know from the reviews available for the different brands on the market. Like this one: BYD Seal Review 2025 | Top Gear

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Very nice and I must admit I would have a single ev at home.

My wife does not drive far but does get terrible range anxiety even with a diesel jeep.

For myself well yeah if it was as exiting as my normal big estate car

But there is no way in this god’s green earth I am going to give up my V8 sports car. Well actually it is better classed as a GT .

They have soul

I gave up watching F1 when they did away with the v10 s and they started making that awful moaning noise.

Part of the thrill of going to a grand Prix was the smell but also the visercal feeling through your chest as a v 10 went pat at full chat.

With regard to the thread title, so can a train wreck, and airliner crash, a chemical plant fire or a simple mistake by a military pilot. EV fires don’t cause mass casualty events.

Is “more and more” as many as a thousand? Vs ~14 million electric cars sold in 2023…

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Yes there are a lot more EVs than ship ferries and boats with L-I batteries, but with many more individual L-I cell in the battery banks on ships than on cars.

It take only one faulty or damaged cell (or some outside influence, like heat, salt water etc.) to start a L-I battery fire. Once it starts it is likely to spread to other cells within the battery bank and to other nearby battery banks.

The perception is that EVs is more prone to fires than ICE vehicles. I haven’t seen any reliable statistics, but is this born up by facts?
Yes I know there are many more ICE vehicles than EVs on the roads, but the question is; which type has more fires per mill. vehicles of each type?

During transport of a mix of new vehicles on PCTCs the fact is that when a fire starts, no matter from what source, to extinguish fire in EVs is very difficult with the means available.

PCTCs are equipped with CO2 full flooding system, foam or sprinklers (on RoPax), but none of this work well on L-I battery fires.

Many bright brains are working on the problem, with new methods and rules being developed, both to reduce the risk and improve the safety.
Here is the view from an Insurance company:

And a fresh article about the EV fires on PCTCs:
https://www.seatrade-maritime.com/accidents/ev-fires-on-ships-spark-insurers-concern.

This would have been around 2004-2005, if my memory doesn’t fail me. But I imagine ship building has higher standards than a machine that treats fabric. And the C-2500 didn’t have to float. A lot can happen in 20 years, especially when you are trying to get a foot in the door in world markets. Good point.

2004-05;, that explains it. That was when China decided to make a “Great Leap Forward” in shipbuilding:
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2001/july/china-taking-great-leap-forward-shipbuilding

They have succeeded admirably in doing that:

Here is how they did it:
https://www.seatrade-maritime.com/shipyards/six-factors-that-enabled-china-to-dominate-global-shipbuilding

A bit of reminiscence:
In 2007 I had an assignment for an up and coming Offshore Construction Company (now defunct) with the glorious title of “Marine Advisor to the Board of Directors”.
The company had ordered a few OSVs of the cheapest possible design and lowest price. I went to the yard in China to attend the delivery of the first vessel.
On my return I advised them to go for high spec, high quality vessels, as the market was turning towards deep waters and more demanding operations.

I repeated that advise in every management and board meeting I attended, but to no avail. I resigned from the assignment after less than a year.

PS>Maybe the company would still exist if they had followed my advise. :grinning_face:

IIRC the Costa D’Avorio fire in NJ was a load of junkers to Africa that caught fire.

Lots of stats available on the NFPA website. Google vehicle fires report.

All you have to do is drive for a few miles on any interstate freeway to see the burn scars from car fires.

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Thanks.
Found this one on the NFPA website:

That applies doubly to PCTC crews, since they cannot always just call the Fire Department.

Better still, speed up the development of less fire prone, less difficult to extinguish type(s) of batteries.

Alternatively, different “zero pollution” ways and means of powering vehicles.

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Yes.

It’s a chemistry/mechanical design problem. Simply make developing new extinguishing agents and compatible battery design a priority for American national laboratories.

Cased by WHAT? I think Dr. SAL has explained it in his video clips.

The biggest problem with car fires, they are so dadblamed hard to put.