A SHIP carrying about 3,000 cars to Mexico was abandoned in the middle of the Pacific Ocean after catching fire Tuesday.
Smoke was first seen coming from a deck on the Morning Midas that was carrying electric vehicles, the ship’s manager Zodiac Maritime said in a statement. It has about 800 EVs on board.
The crew initiated firefighting procedures but the blaze could not be brought under control, it added.
The US Coast Guard evacuated all 22 crew members, transferring them to a nearby merchant ship. The Coast Guard said earlier it was sending aircrews and a vessel toward the ship where crew had been actively fighting a blaze.
The ship departed the Chinese port of Yantai on May 26, according to ship tracking data compiled by Bloomberg. Prior to that it called at two other ports in the country, Nansha in the south and Shanghai.
Zodiac confirmed that responders are being deployed to support salvage and firefighting operations. A spokesperson for the firm declined to comment on who owns the vehicles.
Car-carrying ships haul thousands of vehicles at a time across the world’s oceans.
In recent years, there have been a handful of significant blazes involving vessels hauling electric vehicles, prompting concerns that the batteries inside those cars can catch light and lead to significant disasters.
Such incidents can have major ramifications for carmakers, shipowners and the firms that insure them.
Insurance giant Allianz wrote in a report last month that demand for lithium-ion batteries, including in EVs, brings a new risk to the global shipping industry, particularly given the value of the vehicles on board the largest car-carrying vessels.
#BREAKING (1/2) USCG responding to fire onboard 600ft cargo ship Morning Midas with 22 people aboard 300 mi SW of Adak
– No reported injuries
– Ship’s crew actively fighting fire
– 3 vessels on scene to assist
– USCG aircrews en route to Adak
– USCG Cutter en route to the area— USCGAlaska (@USCGAlaska) June 4, 2025
In 2022, a vessel carrying about 4,000 vehicles caught fire in the Atlantic and ended up sinking despite efforts to tow it to safety. A year later another ship with close to 3,000 cars on board caught fire near the Dutch coast.
Shipowners have also taken steps to try and manage the safety risks involved in hauling electric vehicles.
Last year, a key safety group published guidelines on how to deal with fires on board the vessels. –BLOOMBERG
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