While this mostly concerns Hawaii, it will probably become more of an issue over time. Electric vehicles will be harder to access in Hawaii
Effective today [July 14th], Matson won’t take a booking to ship electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles. They say it’s “due to increasing concern for the safety of transporting vehicles powered by large lithium-ion batteries.”
This is from a carrier that moves about 30,000 vehicles to and from Hawaiʻi every year, a growing number of EVs and hybrids.
This comes after the vessel Morning Midas sank at the end of June, after having a fire break out on its electric vehicle deck about 3 weeks earlier.
There are still ways to get electric vehicles to and from Hawaii, but if other shippers decide the risks are too high, Hawaii may be in a pinch if they have followed California's lead and mandated all electric vehicles. Or they will have to buy Chinese vehicles, though it isn't clear to me if those vehicles meet US safety standards for crash worthiness.
The hat tip goes to MGUY Australia and his video EV Quickie: ANOTHER shipping company BANS electric vehicles. The video is 3 minutes, but really just covers the info in the article linked above.
The DOD moves a lot of those 30k vehicles to and from Hawaii as part of PCS moves. I wonder if Matson is going to try to block moving those cars too.
ReplyDeleteHawaii really has no good options, they have no nuclear plants so they have to import fossil fuels one way or the other. Run the power plants (and tourism) or fuel cars.
Those are exactly the vehicles that Matson is NOT going to move. There is another shipping company doing that work, but if another ship catches fire, they will probably quit too.
Delete3 car carriers have caught fire and sunk in the past 4 years. Insurance rates are going up, and shippers are saying it isn't worth it. (Insurance never pays for everything)