Volkswagen said it is premature to comment on reports that the fire engulfing the car carrier Felicity Ace was started by its electric vehicles. Nearly 4,000 upmarket vehicles of VW Group, including Porsche, Audi, Bentley, and Volkswagen models, are on board the charter ship that caught fire in the middle of its voyage to the United States.
Volkswagen issued a statement, saying any comments at this time on the cause of the fire are "speculative and of course will be subject to investigation once the ship is made safe." The German automaker's comment comes after Felicity Ace captain Joao Mendes Cabecas was quoted by British publication Daily Mail saying that lithium-ion batteries in the electric vehicles on board the charter ship started the fire.
Cabecas said that Felicity Ace is burning from one end to the other, and everything is on fire in the ship about five meters above the waterline. Cabecas, speaking to reporters at the Azores port of Hortas after being rescued alongside 21 other crew members from the blazing ship, added that the fire on board required specialist equipment to extinguish it.
Cabecas' statement is backed up by a recent report of London-based law firm Watson Farley & Williams, which showed that a fire started by electric vehicles is potentially more disastrous and more difficult to handle compared to cars with internal combustion engines.
The report added that if crews of a vessel are not aware that fighting an EV fire requires a different technique to that employed in fighting a conventional fire onboard a ship, it is easy to see how an incident could lead to a total loss, which is certainly the case now with Felicity Ace.
The law firm stated that recent evidence indicated that current suppression and drenching systems are insufficient for this new fire risk. Watson Farley & Williams believed new systems would need to be devised and incorporated into ship design to avoid future disasters.
The 650-foot ship continues to burn in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean six days after the vessel first caught fire. A total of 3,965 Volkswagen AG vehicles are on board the ship, including 1,100 Porsches and 189 Bentleys.
Also Read: Cargo Ship Felicity Ace Catches Fire: Nearly 4,000 Porsche, Audi, Bentley, and VW Vehicles on Board
In case the whole cargo was destroyed on board Felicity Ace, investment bank UBS estimates that the total damage could slash around $454.5 million (€400 million) from Volkswagen's profits. UBS based those estimates on the affected vehicles having an average selling price of $115,000 (€100,000).
UBS said that the exported vehicles on board Felicity Ace are high-price, high-margin products, meaning that the blaze could have a meaningful financial impact on Volkswagen's numbers for the first quarter of 2022.
UBS expects an insurance company to provide financial compensation to VW Group in such a scenario. The investment bank added that even if some of the vehicles on board can be recovered, the shipment could still be meaningfully delayed.
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