Electric cars caught fire on a train full of Porsches, VWs, Bentleys [UPDATED]

Update: Felicity Ace, which has caught fire near the shores of the Azores, will drag to another European country or the Bahamas, the captain of the nearest port told Reuters on Friday.

Lithium-ion the battery inside Electric Car Captain Joao Mendes Cabecas of the port of Hortas said the ship was on fire and the fire needed specialized equipment to extinguish. The source of the fire has yet to be determined.

“The ship was on fire from one end to the other … everything was on fire about five meters above the waterline,” Cabeças said.

Cabecas said the tugs were en route from Gibraltar and the Netherlands, with three due to arrive on Wednesday. He added that the ship could not be towed to the Azores because it was so large it would impede trade at the port.

The original story continues below.

Flag Panama car carrier Felicity Ace caught fire in the Atlantic Ocean while transporting about 2,500 cars, including about 1,100 Porsches and an unspecified amount of Volkswagens. The ship’s 22 crew members were rescued by the Portuguese Navy, but the fate of the vehicles remains unknown.

“Our immediate thoughts are with relief that the 22 crew of the merchant vessel ‘Felicity Ace’ are safe and well,” Porsche Spokesperson Luke Vandezande told Automatic log. “Some of our vehicles are among the goods,” he said. “Customers affected by the incident are being seller. “

“While it is still too early to confirm what happened and the next steps, we – along with our colleagues at Porsche AG – support our customers and dealers as best we can to find a solution,” Vandezande said. “Anyone concerned about this incident and the impact on the vehicle they have ordered should maintain contact with the dealer they ordered it from.”

Vandezande confirmed that Porsche models make up around 1,100 of the 2,500 vehicles believed to be on board. He can’t talk about the provenance or breakdown of any other products or models in stock, but the fan site VWVortex.com Note that the ship of previous manifest reflects the long history of providing facilities for VW Teams and some customers track the arrival of goods ID.4 delivery people say their information indicates that their vehicle may have been on board.

Felicity Ace was sailing from Emden, Germany, to Davisville in Rhode Island when a fire broke out on one of its decks. While it’s too early to say what caused the fire, it was severe enough that it was impossible to extinguish it with devices accessible to the crew on board. The ship sent out a distress signal south of Portuguese-owned Faial Island, roughly in the mid-Atlantic, and nearby ships (including an oil tanker called the Resilient Warrior) were quick. arrived at the scene to rescue crew members, some of whom were already in lifeboats, before the Portuguese Navy arrived. It seems no one was seriously injured, although details of the incident are still being revealed.

Website FleetMon Reportedly, on February 16, the 656-foot ship was abandoned and drifted east. It added that tugs would be deployed to tow the Felicity Ace to a harbour, and that the vessel would most likely be declared total loss due to the damage caused by the fire.

Portuguese Navy published A series of photographs taken on the deck of an oil tanker showed the ship on fire in the distance, flames and smoke visible, and it confirmed in a statement that the Felicity Ace was carrying cars. Some sources said that most of the vehicles seized were new Porsche and Volkswagen models. “We are aware of an incident on board the Felicity Ace, a special cargo ship carry certain Porsche vehicles,” the Stuttgart-based company told some of its customers according to screenshots posted on the enthusiasts forum. Rennlist.

If this story sounds familiar, it may be because more than 2,000 cars were built by Audi and Porsche (including four 911 GT2 RS models aimed at customers in Brazil) was lost when an Italian container ship named “Grande America” catch fire and sink off the French Atlantic coast in 2019. Instead of refunding buyers, Porsche opted to put the limited edition 911 GT2 RS back into production to rebuild lost ones.

Built in Japan in 2005, the Felicity Ace was specially equipped to carry cars; it is not configured to transport other types of goods. It’s about twice as long as a football field, 105 feet wide, and its tonnage (basically a ship’s payload) is close to 20,000 tons.

Stay tuned for more on this developing story.

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