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Comment by martin_a | Hacker News Reader

As a firefighter this is just as funny as cringeworthy to read.

> An electric car fire gets very hot, and there may be a risk of explosion where toxic gases will be released

You know what? That's the case with _every_ car fire in enclosed spaces.

Explosions in car fires are very rare (tires will regularly pop), but every fire will release toxic gases. Especially car fires with lots of highly refined materials in the interior. That's why we wear heavy protective equipment when dealing with fires.

> electric cars, hybrid cars and also hydrogen cars will not be allowed on board

Well, the future does not look bright for this shipping company.

View on HN

"Toxic gases" aside, I think this part is more relevant to their ultimate decision:

> The decision was made after an external risk analysis was made on behalf of the company. What the risk analysis found was that fires in electric cars are considered more difficult to extinguish than fires in cars powered by petrol and diesel.

In other words: the problem is that they can't easily extinguish these fires on their ships. Or, perhaps, doing so isn't worth whatever the corresponding insurance burden is.

We seem to have regular fires in NYC now caused by folk daisy chaining Ebike and Escooter batteries to charge them.

They seem to spread super quickly, be hard to extinguish, and release a lot of toxic smoke.

0 - Four dead at ebike store 1 - Leveled a supermarket and laundromat. Firefighter quoted "something we've never seen before, in terms of going from small to big in a matter of a few minutes" 2 - Over three dozen injured

[0] - https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/20/us/nyc-ebike-store-fire-lithi... [1] - https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/lithium-ion-battery-bla... [2] - https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2022-11-06/nyc-probe...

It just goes on and on like this with a simple search for "battery fire NYC".

Yep. The city has begun offering subsidies to delivery drivers to get them to switch to known safer e-bike models[1]. However, the prices are high even with the subsidies; the fires will likely continue (and continue to be very deadly) until the city takes registration and regulation of repair shops more seriously.

[1]: https://nyrideclean.org/

It's not the same situation: 1. People won't be charging EVs on board. 2. BEVs have proper battery management system with temperature monitoring and active cooling, not some DIY hack.

But lithium fires, if they start, can be nasty, so I'm not surprised the insurance doesn't like it.

Ya, those are fair points. It would be neat to charge the EVs on the ferry ride but that'd probably be a bunch of energy or weight in order to implement.

So firefighters are lacking in technology to deal with this problem.

I wonder how hard it would be to engulf a vehicle with something like a fire retardant expanding foam to contain it?

I guess we could practice on our dead mobile phones for a scaled mock up of the problem? At least that would also help deal with the e-waste problem and is something any individual could do in their own garden shed!

There are special chemical fire extinguishers to deal specifically with this. I'd bet dollars to donuts this came out of an insurance exercise where it wasn't necessarily the scale of the risk, but rather the uncertainty around the risk (because of its novelty). Insurance companies are very cautious about uncertainty, even if the risk seems low.

They don't necessarily stop the reactions that started the fires though. If intense heat starts the fire, you likely need to cool it down and continue cooling to prevent reignition, while allowing the reaction to run its course.

It's basically a hypergolic fuel once the cells are ruptured.

Look into groundwater poisoning around us air force bases due to firefighting foam practice. Swamping a car with it every time a car battery is punctured would be really bad.

This isn't a technology problem but a physics one: How do you sink a lot of heat energy from a chunk of material that responds to water by reacting and generating a lot of heat?

Gasoline carries much more energy than a lithium battery, but spraying it with regular water (I don't know if this is actually common) could disperse the fuel and sap the heat easily, killing two parts of the fire triangle.

You just can't do that with a lithium battery. Other fluids which can soak up massive amounts of energy have other problems, like being very toxic.

You can't disperse the fuel either, because lithium will react with water anywhere it finds it. There's not that much lithium in a battery, but it's enough to keep re-igniting the rest of the battery.

CO2 or a carbonate seems to be key.

Lithium ion batteries are like semtex or rocket fuel, their weakness is they cant be dispersed easily due to their solid compact nature unlike petrol or diesel or gas vapours which can all be dispersed easily, typically with water, and to transfer heat.

A hose that produces a fine mist of water has water droplets with greater surface area with less volume of water which then enables the heat to be absorbed by the water.

So the problem seems to be dispersing or containing the reaction to limit damage.

Years ago, when Tesla was a sports car, my uncle had a friend who was called by fire departments to help when a Tesla crashed. They would not touch the vehicle or anyone inside until he came and did his work. He got several 55 gallon drums and filled them with water. Then he gets a heating element and hooks it to the battery. He drops the element in the water. The water starts to boil within seconds. Once it is at boiling point he takes the hearing element and puts it in another 55 gallon drum. He repeats this until the battery is drained.

It sounds like fire fighters are still scared today. Perhaps it is because there is not only a risk of fire, but also electrocution.

> It sounds like fire fighters are still scared today. Perhaps it is because there is not only a risk of fire, but also electrocution.

Yes, as mentioned there's not enough training happening. Every firefighter should be trained for handling fires in electrical installations.

If you can't shut it off, there are safety distances you'll have to maintain, these are even defined in industrial standards.

For "low voltage" (up to 1.500 V DC) the safety distance is 1 meter for a wide beam of water and 5 meters for a narrow beam of water. This can be well kept (don't lay down in the water, though) with appropriate tactics.

Could someone who took EE please remind me... how many drums of water could a fully-charged Tesla boil?

That's not EE, that's basic math/physics. The largest Telsa Model S battery is 100kWh, which is 360MJ. Boiling 1L of water from room temperature takes 330kJ. 55 US gallons is about 200L water. 200 * 330kJ = 66MJ to boil the whole drum.

360MJ per battery / 66MJ per drum = 5.46 drums of water.

Nice, that's a pretty manageable amount of water to imagine a firefighter having access to.

Are there better ways of discharging EV batteries?

That's how many drums it could take from room temperature (20℃) to 100℃, but it would not be boiling yet. You need to put in more energy at 100℃ to make it boil.

To go from 1 L @ 100℃ to steam at 100 ℃ would take in additional 2.26 MJ.

A 200 L drum of room temperature water then could be used to tank 200 x (2.26 + 0.33) MJ = 518 MJ. They would only need one such drum, and one fully charged Tesla battery would be able to boil away 70% of the water.

That actually works out nicely. Assuming a standard sized 55 gallon drum when the battery runs out juice there would still be about 25 cm of water in the drum. You want enough water to remain so that the heating element stay immersed because it is often bad for them to run in air.

But which method would take longer? Heating five 55-gallon drums to 100C each, or boiling one barrel of water until the battery is dead?

Which is more efficient, time-wise?

My first guess is that heating multiple drums to 100℃ would be faster than boiling one drum. This is based on the rate of heat exchange by contact when two things of different temperature touch is proportional to the temperature difference.

When the water is at 100℃ the difference between it and the heating element should be less than when the water is colder and so it should be transferring heat slower.

By switching drums you are spending more time with the heating element in colder water so can transfer more energy.

However there may be other factors.

First, dH/dt = k ΔT, but k depends on the particular two things that are exchanging heat. I don't know if the k for the heating element and liquid water is the same as the k for the heating element and water that is undergoing a phase transition to steam. Someone who remembers their college thermodynamics a lot better than I do will be needed here.

Second, the battery is going to have some limit on how fast it can transfer energy. That may be low enough that whether you use one drum or multiple may not matter.

If I didn't know the context, this would sound like a contrived example of how great SI units are.

Also, all teslas are fitted with the same batteries now, with a software limit. Don't know how charged the extra capacity is, or if it's spread out.

How many cubic feet of water would a 5 BTU battery be able to bring to a boil?

And no one considered how dangerous 55 gallons of boiling water is?

I wonder if that could be built into new fire trucks. For a fire truck with 1500 gallons of room temperature water (20℃ or 68℉) the energy from a full charged Tesla would raise that to 35℃ or 95℉ which is not so hot that it would be dangerous when used to put out the fire.

For a smaller fire trucks with only 1000 gallons that would raise to around 42℃ or 108℉ which might be too hot to use.

For fire trucks with only 500 gallons this approach it would definitely be too hot to use. The water would end up at around 65℃ or 150℉. That scalds people in under 2 seconds.

Have you found electric car fires as easy to put out as ICE car fires?

See my answer on another comment: It's a question of the right strategy. But that strategy is being trained regularly, there are preparations in place and in case I would encounter an EV fire with my local department, we would have a through ready in about half an hour and could dump it in there.

The discussion with EV fires now, we had 15 years ago with solar panels. People were panicking that firefighters would not be able to reach the burning roof under the solar panels, houses would burn down like nothing or that firefighters would die to electric shocks when taking care of those fires.

Reality is that some regulation was put in place (roof-mounted solar systems need an emergency breaker in Germany) and people found that the solar panels were most likely already gone in fully developed fires or that they could be rather easy and safely be ripped from the roof, when necessary.

But we are talking about a car on a boat. Will your fire department be able to put out a lithium fire on a boat?

also it's probably very hard to get to that individual car on the ship, unlike how it would be on a road

I guess the ferry will have firefighters onboard. They should be trained on how to handle car fires in general.

They will then need some equipment to get EVs out of their parking position (forklift maybe?!?) and have some container ready to drop them into. It's a problem that can be solved with the right equipment.

Lol. I think you are overextending your hand here. You ever been on a ferry? You can't move the cars, they are completely packed like sardines.

I know. And I think that tight packing is a problem. But it's also a problem with extinguishing "normal" car fires already, as fire can easily spread from one car to another, through heat radiation alone. The underlying problem should be fixed.

I would wager a guess that ICE cars are not transported with any gasoline in their tanks, unlike electric cars.

On a ferry? Of course they are transported with gasoline. The owners drive them on, then drive them off at the other side.

itt: Tell me you've no clue how a ferry works without telling me you've no clue how a ferry works.

It seems you don't understand the concept of a ferry. It is like a bridge which moves with you. You drive on, the ferry departs and moves to some other location (other side of the river, other side of a lake) and you drive off. You can see the operation in this randomly selected video for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkKTyf_RAzk )

ICE cars have gasoline in their tanks, because that is what they use to drive on the ferry and that is how they drive off the ferry.

Come on, be serious. Civilian ferries don't carry dedicated firefighters. The crew receive some cursory training in basic firefighting every once in a while. They depend mainly on fixed firefighting systems that dispense CO2, suppressants, or water.

It's impossible to operate a forklift on the tightly packed cargo deck of a ferry, especially while the space is filled with toxic smoke. Nor is there room onboard for a fire resistant container.

It's hilarious how a bunch of software developers who have never spent any time at sea think they have all the answers.

> The crew receive some cursory training in basic firefighting every once in a while.

That is EXACTLY part of the problem. You put people with lots of flammable stuff under their asses on a ship in the middle of nowhere, with no help readily available, and hope that some sprinklers will be good enough to do the job.

Don't you see a problem with that, that should be tackled?

I see all sorts of marine safety problems that could be tackled with sufficient resources. If you're an expert in this area then I would encourage you to work through your national authorities to propose further SOLAS amendments. They come up with new ones on a regular basis.

https://www.dnv.com/news/what-s-new-with-solas-2024--227502

The thing is that ferries are generally a low margin business so imposing a bunch of extra firefighting requirements will make some of them at the margins no longer economically viable. And fires aren't necessarily even the biggest risk: they also have to worry about collisions, loss of power, storms, navigational errors, cargo shifting, etc.

Realistically I just don't think civilian crews can be expected to effectively fight major fires in 50KWh+ lithium battery packs. Instead they should focus on fast, safe evacuation; when there is significant loss of life due to shipboard fires it's usually because the crew waited too long to abandon ship and screwed up the lifeboat deployment. Once the people are off then just let the vessel burn, or perhaps let a skeleton crew try to put into a nearby harbor where fire boats with trained personnel can take over.

It may also be practical to do something on the prevention front such as a quick visual inspection of EVs for obvious battery pack damage and dashboard warning lights. Or require packs to be discharged below 20% or whatever before boarding (passengers will complain about this).

A long time ago I was trained to be an officer on commercial oceangoing ships. In addition to regular classwork and practice with firefighting equipment, we were sent to Military Sealift Command Firefighting school to get experience fighting fires in actual shipboard conditions. It's a bit more than "cursory training." I'm not sure everyone came back with all their eyebrows intact :-)

Not an expert firefighter by any means, even back then. Just responding to this to add some data. Still, you make a good point: if you're not regularly fighting fires, that training atrophies like anything else. If fire like this breaks out anywhere but on the main deck, my guess is that they'd just flood the space with CO2.

So as far as you view it, there is no heightened risk with EV fires in closed quarters on a ship at sea? They're all packed in tight, with gasoline cars and other EVs.

Will a fire department be able to put out a gasoline fire on a boat? A diesel fire on a boat?

Chance are, electrical fires are much more self contained than gasoline fires

The exact issue you describe was a problem in a recent urban fire in the Netherlands though [1], the fire could not be properly extinguished under the embedded solar panels in the roof and spread further than it would have otherwise.

Having these corner case be an over-focus of an overall better technology is a bad human habit though [2]

[1] https://www.rtlnieuws.nl/nieuws/nederland/artikel/5391449/zo...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiYO1TObNz8

> The panels in Arnhem were not placed on roof tiles, but directly on the roof. The roofs of the entire block of houses are connected by solar panels.

This is not how normal solar panels are placed on roofs. In CA, for example, there are offset requirements where they have to be a certain distance from the edge of the roof, and on top of roof tiles/shingles. The only exception is uninhabited buildings, like a detached garage.

Sounds like Norway needs to adjust its safety regulations.

Bologna aside, isn’t there a legit issue re the difficulty in extinguishing an EV battery pack?

I can see how “just give it a few days to burn itself out isn’t a viable strategy on a boat.

Since it's a ferry, a solution could be to just push if overboard. How often do fires on ferry happen?

you can't push them when they are deep in a pack of cars

You would have to push the entire column of cars before it overboard.

So make sure the electric cars are loaded last.

Probably still cheaper even paying for the recovery effort if they are not dumped too deep to replace those cars than to replace the ship, in terms of total cost if the ship is totalled.

How you push a column of cars around a raging fire is another problem. I don't know what I'd do.

These are not open-deck ferries, the cars are in closed decks.

So it's easy to cut off the oxygen supply to the fire?

Sure - so long as you've spent the necessary $millions in advance, to build that feature into the ship. Plus crew training, safety certifications, insurance, etc. Imagine if a couple idiot kids or passed-out drunks were in the compartment which you de-oxygenated.

Last time I took a big car ferry the car decks were off limits for passengers. On a smaller ferry it's more of a problem but the risks are also lower.

Last time I took a ferry with car capabilities (between Hokkaido and Honshu) the car deck was very much accessible to passengers.

Li-ion batteries supply their own oxygen when they burn, you can't smother the fire.

There are deck walls strong enough to prevent a vehicle falling out of the ship, but usually open at either end to ensure good ventilation.

There are hundreds of these ferries operating in Europe (and other places with large islands or short seas/lakes), from tiny ones that carry 2-4 cars, to large ones with multiple decks.

https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/car-ferry.html?sortBy=rele...

Tiny (UK): https://www.alamy.com/the-dartmouth-to-kingswear-car-ferry-l...

Small (Germany): https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-car-ferry-harbour-friedric...

Medium (Brazil): https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-car-on-board-the-ferry-mak...

Large (UK/France): https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-the-vehicle-deck-of-a-cros...

Note these are public passenger ferries. You arrive at the port, buy a ticket, drive on and (usually) get out of the car for the journey.

Not easy. The vehicle decks on ferries can't be tightly sealed off. Modern ferries often have CO2 fire extinguisher systems fitted but those have limited capacity and the fire can reflash quickly when the oxygen level rises again.

Cars on a ferry are locked in by other cars, and in large ferries like this one a ceiling as well.

Have you ever actually seen a bunch of cars tightly parked on a ferry? If not, google 'cars on a ferry' and click some images. Now, imagine a car somewhere in the middle of the bunch catching fire. Are you going to volunteer 'pushing it overboard'?

Ignoring the other impracticalities that sibling commenters have pointed out, are you going to be the one to reach inside and put the flaming car in neutral? 'cuz you ain't pushing shit if that thing's still in Park.

I think this post was made because of this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-66310280

From the article:

>Last year a cargo ship carrying 4,000 luxury cars caught fire and sank off the Azores. Lithium-ion batteries in the cars caught fire and firefighters needed specialist equipment to put out the fire.

There is a cargo ship right now in the NL that apparently has ~3,000 cars on it - and its on fire. I wonder if it has many EVs on it.

Ah 25 Evs on it...

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/one-dead-cargo-ship-fir...

A small contingent of about 25 EVs take responsibility for the operation, destroying thousands of their ICE foes.

And the fact that the fire "started near the EVs" is a False Frag.

I was just at the fire station in Netherlands last week for a tour and asked the very question.

Answer: Electric cars are different from ICE cars in that the fire must be put off differently. We are trained to handle an EV fire by using a “blanket” method wherein a boxy containment zone will be erected to completely enclose the burning EV limiting ability of that chemical reaction to break out in a larger way. We have the tools, and the necessary practice for it, and treat it no different than a regular petrol car.

Sure, but that doesn't work on a ship. Or in an enclosed parking garage on land.

Hm, it's not that difficult in the end, at least on land.

First part is checking whether the battery pack is affected after all. Not all EV car fires lead to problems with the battery pack and sometimes you can just extinguish the fire like any other.

We check the battery by inspecting it with thermal cameras (remove any protection on the bottom of the car first - not easy). If the temperature of the pack rises after the initial fire has been put out, the battery pack seems to have a problem.

In that case, permanent cooling is the way to go. You will start doing this by sprinkling the battery with a hose to keep temperatures stable. At some point, you'll want to release the personell and need a more permanent solution.

That's where troughs come in to play. You will fill that up with water until you can completely submerge the battery pack in water. Either place the car in first or lift it in afterwards, that doesn't matter, it's just a handling thing. The car stays in there for several days until the chain reaction in the battery has stopped.

I can see how this might be somewhat more complicated on a ship in the middle of nowhere, but you wouldn't want to have a burnt-out non-EV car standing on your ship for an extended period of time, too. So you'll have to reach shore quickly anyway and get more help.

Seems like a crane and dropping the car into the ocean is the solution then! /s

If all else fails, I'd consider that option.

But the problem seems to be more of how to get a burning car out of the pile of cars in your ferry. Doesn't matter if EV or not, you want to have it out of there at some point and that seems to be tricky.

How well can you manage the temperature of a "burning" lithium car battery with unlimited water supplies? Can you easily keep it cool enough to not damage the floor or deck of the boat it is on? If you can, it seems like the long term solution would be two seawater pumps, hoses, and a barrier so you can erect an impromptu kiddy pool around the burning vehicle, and just flow constant seawater around it until you get to port or it stops being a problem.

That could indeed be a solution. Enough mass of water or enough flow of water will transfer the heat away fast enough.

The battery is done at that point anyway, but submerging it will stop flames and toxic fumes from forming from an "open" fire. The cells will "melt" and react with each other on and on until they're done, you can't really stop that.

The same thing is done with gas bottles. Once they have been subject to flames or enough heat, they are considered unsafe and will have reactions going on in the inside. You can measure those due to a rise in temperature on the outside, too.

Gas bottles are also put into containers full of water, for at least 24 hours, until the reactions on the inside are done.

Cooling them prevents them from heating up until they burst though. Same goes for EV battery packs.

Trapdoors, under each car. Put the captain in a big twirly seat and give him a red button and a white cat, because everything's better when you're cosplaying as a Bond villain.

(Ok, serious question about the portable-barrier-and-pump solution: could there be any chemical risk from using sea water, rather than fresh water?)

I don't know a whole lot about electric vehicles, but I am already aware that fire departments struggle to put them out compared to say, an ICE vehicle fire. Often, fire departments have to just let the fire burn itself out. Fires on ships is extremely problematic, as I am sure you are aware.

likewise, the fumes released from the batteries are much more toxic than those released from gasoline. coper, cobalt, lead, and other toxic minerals are released into the air in much greater quantities. as you can imagine, this is also extremely problematic in enclosed spaces, like on a ship.

I think it's in the light of this incident: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/one-dead-cargo-ship-fir...

What do you think of this story with one person dead?

https://news.sky.com/story/one-dead-and-several-injured-afte...

I don't think much of it, too little information available at this point.

Reuters [1 or see comment above] says the fire started "near" an EV, Sky seems to know better and says an EV was the source of the fire. What's right now?

If an EV was the cause of the fire, the question would be, if the outcome would have been different if the car was a petrol car of some sort.

Also: Why did somebody die? Why did some people jump overboard while others were airlifted? What's with emergency boats and whatnot else?

More from the Reuters article: "It's a very hard fire to extinguish, possibly because of the cargo the ship was transporting". Is that because of the 25 EVs on board or because something else?

This whole story is made up like the whole ship went "Boom!" and from one second to another the whole thing was up in flames.

[1]: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/one-dead-cargo-ship-fir...

I've read other people say some cargo ships have been refusing to take EVs, there have been a few of these incidents in the last few years. If so, this looks like an incident that could make banning EVs on boats more common.

Firstly, all large chunks of Lithium-based battery packs must be regulated/controlled, just like how airlines are doing.

Secondly, Hydrogen is dangerous indoors, because the gas gets trapped AND is odorless, and no one will notice until something goes boom.

Natural gas and propane are odorless too. They solved that problem by adding an odorant to it.

I don't think you can add an odor to an offgassing byproduct of a battery.

My comment is responding to the parents comment about hydrogen fuel.

https://www.hydrogenfuelnews.com/hydrogen-fuel-odorized/8550...

It's harder than is obvious, the odorant must spread in the same way that the hydrogen does under wind and buoyancy.

Natural gas is a bit of a heavier molecule but hydrogen is very light and I suspect that the hydrogen and the smell would very rapidly separate.

A bigger problem is that hydrogen can leak through tiny cracks, and odorant can't.

As a firefighter you should know putting out lithium battery fire is very different. It burns much hotter, releases toxic gas. You can not use water to put it out, lithium reacts with water and releases more toxic gas. Water is like gasoline. Battery also reignites randomly, even after fire was stopped.

To completely stop lithium battery fire, you need to submerge it in liquid oil for several weeks, to make sure that thing is completely dead. In country of 10 million people, we only have two tanks, that can deal with electric car fire.

Electric car can self ignite randomly, even after being parked for several hours or days. We are lucky Tesla has good QA, but that will change as other brands (even Chinese) will flood market. And there will be DIY battery repairs... Ferry in Norway could have cars from Bulgaria or Serbia onboard. Even homemade electric bike is electric vehicle!

I am absolutely for banning electric cars from underground garages, ferries, long tunnels, and so on.

> In country of 10 million people, we only have two tanks, that can deal with electric car fire.

In a county of 160k people we have two troughs on standby for these cases. It's about being trained and prepared and things will lose its horror.

I'm a bit surprised that Norway would be so far behind your county, but regardless it seems like the shipping company is acting prudently given Norway's lack of readiness.

That is Czechia, not Norway.

Yeah I should have realized you couldn’t have been talking about Norway. Had I turned my brain on, I would have realized that a rich country with so much EV uptake couldn’t possibly be so far behind in EV fire suppression.

> I am absolutely for banning electric cars from underground garages, ferries, long tunnels, and so on.

I’m very glad you don’t write laws.

>In country of 10 million people, we only have two tanks, that can deal with electric car fire.

so.... build more?

if there are too few fire extinguishers in a building do you scrap the building or do you commission more?

My thoughts also. I mean there was a time when there were no fire hydrants or fire trucks or extinguishers of any kind. It always takes a while to build up infrastructure and learn enough about risks to be able to train people.

We just have to accept that we’re only at the beginning and get to commissioning.

>As a firefighter you should know putting out lithium battery fire is very different. It burns much hotter, releases toxic gas. You can not use water to put it out, lithium reacts with water and releases more toxic gas. Water is like gasoline.

Dunning-Kruger effect? You are explaining to a firefighter who is presumably trained in this stuff that water makes the problem worse … when a simple Google search shows you that using (a lot of) water is the standard recommended procedure for EV fires across the globe.

https://www.ctif.org/news/150-000-liters-water-needed-put-ou...

https://www.iafc.org/topics-and-tools/resources/resource/iaf...

https://www.phoenix.gov/firesite/Documents/074742.pdf

https://www.dekra-roadsafety.com/en/what-to-do-if-an-electri...

https://www.ntsb.gov/safety/safety-studies/Documents/SR2001....

Yes, they do recommend pouring water on burning EVs, but this does nothing to extinguish the fire, it just keeps it under control, keeps it from spreading, until it burns out on its own. That takes 40 times more water and more time than extinguishing ICE car fire - one of your own links explains it.

Actually, the most practical solution to transporting electric cars by ferry might be to dump them into the sea in case of fire :)

As someone else said, the amount of water needed is a non-issue on a ferry…

Do they usually extinguish fires by pumping ocean water?

Seems so: https://www.carverpump.com/marine-fire-pumps-the-ultimate-gu...

Ships tend to have much, much more saltwater available than potable water, yes.

You mean like this?

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/one-dead-cargo-ship-fir...

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20230726-deadly-fire-b...

What's your point? They are not running out of water.

There is a time limit on how long you can do that without sinking the ship, unless the whole thing is above deck and can drain off.

Fires on boats are terrifying. Second only to submarine fires, IMO.

Technically I was talking about lithium battery fire, not entire EV.

But not using water on electric devices, is one of first things we learn in safety training. Even fire extinguishers are not based on H2O, but specialized chemicals! I worked at UPS backup batteries.

Maybe time to upgrade your country's readiness to fight EV fires.

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