The Felicity Ace Legal Battle: Court Rules on Porsche Battery Fire Claims

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:00:00]On this episode of what's going on with shipping, was Porsche responsible for the loss of the motor vessel Felicity Ace?

[00:00:07]I'm your host, Sal Mercogliano. Welcome to today's episode. So, you know I love talking about shipping, but one of my other passions is firefighting. I've been a firefighter for over 25 years, and when I have firefighting and ships together, well, that's that's kind of my sweet spot. And we have been covering shipboard fires quite a bit since the beginning of this channel back in 2021.

[00:00:30]One of the vessels we covered was Felicity Ace, which was lost at sea in the Atlantic Ocean in 2022.

[00:00:37]And one of the causes, or potential causes, for the loss of that ship had to do with a fire on board that they believe started on an electrical vehicle. Now, a lot of controversy surrounding electrical vehicles. We're going to tackle that subject today and talk about what the recent court case in Germany found. If you're new to the channel, hey, take a moment, subscribe to the channel and hit the bell, so you'll be alerted about new videos as they come out. So, this is the story by Mike Schuler over at gCaptain. Porsche wins Felicity Ace lawsuit as cause of fire remains unproven. Porsche has won a key legal battle stemming from the loss of the car carrier Felicity Ace with a German court reportedly rejecting claims that a Porsche Taycan battery caused the fire that ultimately destroyed the vessel and nearly 4,000 vehicles.

[00:01:27]According to German legal news outlet Legal Tribune online, the regional court of Stuttgart dismissed a lawsuit seeking approximately 30 million euros, that's about 34 million dollars US, in damages from Porsche. The plaintiffs, which include the Japanese owner of the vessel MOL and five marine hull insurers, including Allianz, alleged that a self-igniting lithium-ion battery in a Porsche Taycan sparked the February 22 fire aboard the vessel. LTO reported that the court found the plaintiffs failed to prove that a Porsche vehicle was the source of the blaze. The burden of proof rested with the plaintiffs and the court was ultimately not convinced that a Taycan battery caused the fire.

[00:02:11]So, this image shows Felicity Ace after the fire. Now, a couple of things need to be understood about having vehicle fires on board a ship. Number one, car carriers are laid out like parking decks. However, there's no space between the vehicles. Literally, you are bumper-to-bumper, door-to-door on board these vessels. The only way for a crew to fight a car fire on a ship is to seal the decks and flood them with carbon dioxide, CO2. The problem with lithium-ion and EVs, electrical vehicles in general, is that the EV does not go out when you put carbon dioxide on it because it's self-oxidizing. It creates oxygen. So, you can take a EV, put it in water, and it's still going to keep burning. This is the problem associated A carbon dioxide blanket in the deck of a ship will prevent the spread of the fire, but it will not prevent the fire on the EV. And with a very limited crew, anywhere from 20 to 23 people on board, you cannot go onto the decks with fire hoses and fight this fire. It is just impossible. If you look here, this is an image before the fire really was fully out of control. You can see the decks where the burn patterns are, and this fire spread from deck to deck. And what eventually happened is it encumbered the entire vessel. Now, fire gutting the ship should not sink it. The problem you get on board car carriers is the cars are strapped and held in the place with cloth straps. When the fire sweeps through the deck, those cloth straps burn through, the ship begins to list and roll, and the vehicles shift. And what you eventually get is a loss of buoyancy and the ship will roll. Plus, if the fire gets into the engine room, you can lose the entire vessel. [snorts] So, if you want to understand EV fires, lithium-ion fires, I recommend heading over to my good friend's channel, Patrick Durham. He runs a great channel called Stash D Training. He is a captain in a suburban fire department outside of Flint, Michigan.

[00:04:19]Really well done. He covers fires including electrical fires. That's really his big forte and I really recommend it. We have been looking at car fires. We looked at ships like the Fremantle Highway. We talked about how Matson prohibited the loading of electrical vehicles on board. Talked about a very nasty car fire that took place on board the Grande Costa D'avorio up in Newark that led to the death of two firefighters. That was not electrical vehicles. We talked about the Port Miami explosion and why EVs are such a problem on ship. The problem is not that the EVs ignite. The problem is that once a fire takes place and an EV is involved, it's almost impossible to put them out. And what we've seen is a lot of these fires across the board. So, this story from 2019, burning car carrier Sincerity Ace abandoned in the Pacific Ocean, two missing, three fatalities confirmed. Or recently in 2025, we have this vessel, the Morning Midas, which caught fire in the Northern Pacific just south of the Aleutian Islands. This vessel eventually succumbed and sank. So, a lot of literature has been written about these car fires. This is Felicity Ace on fire, but this article from G Captain in 2022 talks about how to prevent the risk of battery fires in shipping and it's dealing specifically with electrical vehicles and battery-powered electrical devices that are being transported. And it's not as simple as it sounds because of the way electrical vehicles are, you can't unhook the batteries, you can't remove the batteries, a lot of them are integral into the vehicle themselves.

[00:06:06]So, you have a lot of difficulties and and challenges with this. What we've seen is how the shipping industry has tackled this. So, you get a story like this. MOL, which is the company that actually operated Felicity Ace, has revealed its plans to enhance fire detection capabilities in its new build LNG fueled car carriers by installing cameras and an advanced AI system. This is being based or being developed by the Israeli-based Captain's Eye. It'll provide early detection of fires on board the vessel. The systems will be installed on 10 car carriers on order and scheduled for delivery in 2024. The goal here is to get early detection and hopefully prevent the fire from spreading. If you can grab the fire early and maybe lock it down, then you won't have the expansion. The problem Now, this happens on an EV, it's going to be very difficult to do, but if it happens on an ICE, an internal combustion engine car, then maybe you can prevent that spread. You can early detection, flood the deck with the CO2, or using fire prevention and fire suppression techniques, prevent the larger conflagration from happening.

[00:07:14]But, what we're seeing is lithium-ion batteries in shipping are a major problem. Just for example, back in September of 2024, we had a fire in the port of Montreal, uh which was uh container housed lithium-ion batteries, and that triggered a temporary stay-at-home order for the residents while that fire was being suppressed. We saw a very similar thing take place in the port of Los Angeles and Long Beach back in September of 2024 when a fire involving an overturned tractor trailer carrying lithium batteries caused the ports to shut down, it created a lot of issues. This has led both US and international agencies to issue guides on how to deal with these risks. So, the US Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration released a guide for lithium battery shipping and to address the growing concerns, particularly in the maritime sector. The fear is that once you have a fire involving an EV or lithium-ion battery, you'll get that thermal runaway that takes place. That's that chemical reaction that can lead to the cell igniting and exploding. And the problem you have, again, being a firefighter, I can tell you, is that when you deal with firefighting with an electrical car, our procedure is basically is to back away from it and let it burn. You can't do that on a ship because the cars are bumper to bumper, door to door, they're going to spread. And even when you flood the compartment with the CO2, which is the element you have, you can't use Halon anymore. Halon's illegal. Plus, Halon doesn't really deal with the issue, either. All Halon is doing is removing the oxygen. Since these are self-oxidizing, you have that problem.

[00:08:54]Now, what we have seen is several companies, particularly insurance companies, have been addressing this.

[00:09:00]So, for example, Allianz, which is the big insurance company, has issued fire risk and loss prevention measures in regards to shipping. And they have these guides. One of the big fires that took place back in 2022 was on board a ship in the Port of Jacksonville, the Ho Chi Minh, that actually injured nine Jacksonville firefighters on board because of a backdraft. The firefighting crews did not realize they shouldn't open a compartment. They vented the compartment, allowed oxygen into it, and basically got a flashover or backdraft.

[00:09:35]And that's what caused the injuries. So, they talk about the four major hazards, which are fire, explosion, thermal runaway, and one of the big ones is toxic gases. A lot of people talk about, well, we should put the covers, these these blankets over the car. The problem is they capture the hydrogen that is venting off the batteries and can cause explosions. They largely recommend a couple of actions. Number one, choose a reputable manufacturer. Ensure you're not shipping used vehicles because you don't know what the damage is to this.

[00:10:08]This is one of the reasons why Matson stopped shipping vehicles EV vehicles because they were used and they were unsure of whether the batteries had been damaged. Check the battery state of charge. Ideally, you want to get them down to between 30 and 50%. You can't get them down to zero. It just doesn't work in that.

[00:10:27]To be aware of short circuits, to follow the packaging instructions, and train your staff. Now, unfortunately, there's not a lot you can do for prevention and loss prevention guidance. One of the things that we do see is that there are EV manufacturers that are hauling large numbers of EVs on ships without any instances. For example, the Chinese manufacturer BYD has car carriers designed to carry EVs and that's largely what they carry is just EVs. One of the big misconceptions, I think, out there is whether, you know, EVs are starting the fire or is it internal combustion engine vehicles are starting the fire.

[00:11:05]Regardless, once the fires take place, if you have EVs on board, that is the difficulty. In the case of Felicity Ace, they were not able to identify the ultimate root cause of the fire and therefore Porsche wins the lawsuit and therefore not blamed for the fire. This is a difficult issue to prove. The loss of Felicity Ace generated a lot of attention for a couple of reasons. Number one, it was right off the coast of the Azores. All 22 crew members were evacuated, but the ship burned for 2 weeks. The ship had 4,000 vehicles on board, including Porsches, Bentleys, Audis, Lamborghinis, and Volkswagens. With more than 100 Porsche Taycans on board, this actually hurt US car sales in the United States because a lot of these high-end Audi Audis, Bentleys, and and Lamborghinis were already sold. They were on the way acro across. So, it took a while to backfill that. So, the ship was Panama flagged. Now, notoriously, the Panama Maritime Authority does not like to release their reports publicly, and they have not done so in this case, even though they investigated the fire back in 2022. Now, the legal battle is not over. There's going to be other lawsuits pending against Porsche for the fire. Obviously, if you can track down that the fire was caused by a specific vehicle, then you can ascertain losses from that. However, it's very difficult to tell. Even though these ships would have monitoring equipment in the holds, not going to be able to see everything. The ship holds are really long. Obviously, the moment that the fire starts, smoke's going to come up. You're you're not going to have clear visibility. There was allegations that the fire started on a Porsche because that was the deck where the vehicles were on. But again, you're going based on the observation of the crew members, and whether or not they could even get to the vehicles is difficult. One of the big difficulties we're seeing is lithium-ion batteries are not just in cars, but they're also being shipped over in containers all the time. We've had numerous container ship fires where we believe the cause of this is lithium-ion batteries. You may remember the ONE Henry Hudson, which caught fire last year in the Port of LA.

[00:13:21]It is believed that that ship was carrying spent lithium-ion batteries, basically retrograde lithium ion batteries loaded in a container down in the hold, and that's what caused the fire on board that vessel. So, these batteries are in issue in transportation. I'm not saying they shouldn't be transported and we should get away from lithium ion batteries cuz lithium ion batteries are great. They they do amazing things that we couldn't do with the old basically lead-based cell batteries. However, there needs to be concerned about the transportation of vehicles and lithium ion batteries when it comes to shipping. Because right now, there's no way to tackle a lithium ion fire. One of the things they did on the Henry Hudson is literally flood the compartment with water where the lithium ion batteries was. The issue with that is you contaminated that water, and then that water had to be taken out and treated as a hazardous material. It's the the There there are many lose-lose scenarios when it comes to fighting lithium ion batteries on board ships.

[00:14:22]Hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you did, hey, take a moment, subscribe to the channel, and hit the bell so you'll be alerted about new videos as they come out. Leave a comment, share it across social media, and if you can, support the page. And not just my page, but head on over to Patrick Durham's channel, Stashed Training. Great channel when it comes to firefighting, particularly with the issue of lithium ion batteries. But if you want to support my page, hey, do me a favor. Give it a thumbs up. Hit that super thanks button down below, or head on over to Patreon and become a monthly yearly subscriber. Till the next episode, Seao. Signing off.