VW freighter sank after fire – cars are to be replaced

The VW cargo ship "Felicity Ace" has sunk in the Atlantic.

The sunken vehicles are now to be replaced.

Update from March 18, 2022, 11:30 a.m .:

A little more than two weeks have passed since the car transport ship "Felicity Ace" sank off the Azores in the Atlantic.

Since then, many US customers will have wondered how the shipwreck affected their orders.

The brands concerned have now answered precisely this question.

Accordingly, the sunken vehicles will be replaced, as the group has now announced.

"The brands and dealers have already started to inform their customers and to find individual solutions," said a group spokesman for the "Car and Driver" portal.

VW freighter sank after fire – cars are to be replaced

This also applies to the 15 Lamborghini Aventador Ultimae models that were on board the "Felicity Ace".

"We are working to prioritize production capacity to ensure orders are replaced as soon as possible," said a Lamborghini spokesman.

“We will try to minimize the impact on customers as much as possible.

With great effort, we managed to restore the supply chain for the Aventador Ultimae to replace the missing vehicles.”

Bentley has already managed to replace more than half of the 189 Bentleys lost with the ship.

"We're doing some clever things with dealerships to keep [those customers] mobile, which I'm not going to talk about," CEO Adrian Hallmark told Automotive News.

And Audi also wants to replace all 1,800 sunken cars, emphasized Markus Duesmann.

However, the Audi boss does not lose the exact plans of the VW subsidiary.

Update from March 2, 2022, 8:30 a.m .:

The car transport ship "Felicity Ace" sank in the Atlantic off the Azores and is now about 3,500 meters below the sea surface.

Water probably got in while trying to tow the 200-meter vessel after the fire that had broken out there had died down.

"The ship lost its stability and sank," said the port captain of the Azores island of Faial.

It is therefore clear that the 3,965 loaded new cars from the Volkswagen Group are irretrievably lost - among them there are also very expensive models from Bentley and Porsche, as well as the last examples of the Lamborghini Aventador, which is no longer offered.

VW freighter sunk after fire - almost 4,000 new cars finally lost

In addition to the economic damage, there is also ecological damage: At this depth, there is hardly any way to salvage or seal the cars.

Harmful operating materials will therefore get into the water.

According to the port captain, however, no oil has been sighted on the water surface so far.

Update from February 25, 2022, 11:15 a.m .:

The fire on the VW freighter "Felicity Ace" has probably been extinguished.

A week after the fire broke out on the ship laden with nearly 4,000 VW, Audi, Porsche, Bentley and Lamborghini cars, five salvage experts have now been able to get on board.

This is reported by the Portuguese news agency Lusa, citing port commanders on the Azores island of Faial.

The men had no longer noticed any flames on the ship drifting in the Atlantic, and there were no signs of an imminent flare-up either.

On the other hand, it is still completely open what condition the cars are in – some of them are expensive one-off productions.

Fire extinguished on VW freighter – are these models now being reproduced?

There may be examples of the now sold-out Lamborghini Aventador and its limited Ultimae special model on board.

If these are destroyed, the Italian sports car brand may consider resuming production.

"If these models in particular are affected, we have to find a way to restart production so that we can serve customers," quoted "Auto Motor und Sport" the US boss of Lamborghini.

Update from February 24, 2022, 11:00 a.m .:

The freighter with 3,965 cars from VW and its premium brands Audi, Porsche, Bentley and Lamborghini continues to burn – even if the flames are apparently no longer licking vigorously, but rather blazing inside.

Specialists from the Dutch rescue and salvage company Smit Salvage try to save what can be saved.

But it could actually be that there is not much left of the cars, whose total value is estimated at over 400 million dollars (approx. 356 million euros).

Fire on VW freighter: are the electric cars to blame for everything?

The loaded electric cars in particular seem to be developing into a problem, or rather their batteries.

The suspicion has already arisen that one of the lithium-ion packs caught fire and triggered the whole disaster in the first place.

The extinguishing work is also made considerably more difficult by the energy storage devices that caught fire.

Burning lithium batteries can only be extinguished with huge amounts of water: from their previous experience, fire experts know that around 8,000 liters of water are required instead of the usual 3,000 liters to extinguish flames in an electric car.

First report from February 19, 2022, 9:37 a.m.:

Horta (Azores, Portugal) – She disembarked in Emden in Lower Saxony, heading for Houston in Texas, USA: The “Felicity Ace”, a huge 200-meter freighter.

But now the ship is burning in front of the Azores - with valuable cargo on board, which is actually eagerly awaited on the other side of the Atlantic.

There are 3,965 new cars from the Volkswagen Group on the floating car park, including coveted luxury models, as reported by 24auto.de.

There are 189 vehicles from the luxury British brand Bentley on board, which start at just under 200,000 euros new – but are actually much more expensive.

1,100 Porsche models are also apparently threatened by the flames.

Some of the shocked buyers have already made themselves known on social media, so a Twitter user fears the worst for his Porsche 718 Boxster Spyder (from 93,350 euros).

(Expensive total loss: Extremely rare Lamborghini burns out)

fire on board!

Are almost 4,000 VW, Porsche and Bentley cars burning?

Some vehicles from the Italian sports car manufacturer Lamborghini are also said to be on board, with German list prices starting at 221,499 euros.

As is usual with export models to the USA, cars from the VW and Audi brands are also expensive models such as the Golf R (from 51,835 euros).

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The burning "Felicity Ace" off the Azores.

© Marinha Portugal/dpa

"The ship is on fire from end to end," said a harbor master in the Azores, with the flames raging more than five meters above the waterline.

Fire ships from Gibraltar and a Dutch special company are on site and still on the way.

The rescue attempts are made more difficult by the fact that there are also many electric cars on board, such as the VW ID.4, whose lithium-ion batteries are difficult to extinguish.

(Fire in the electric car: how big is the fire hazard for electric vehicles really?)

fire on board!

All crew members safe

If possible, the Panama-flagged freighter is now to be towed to a port in the Bahamas or mainland Europe, as it is too large for the Azores facilities.

The good news: All 22 crew members are safe, as Audi announced - which is not a matter of course in a highly dangerous maritime emergency such as a fire on board.

It is not the first maritime disaster of this kind for Volkswagen: in 2019, the “Grande America” caught fire on the way from Hamburg to Casablanca (Morocco) and sank – with more than 2,000 luxury cars, including Audis and Porsches, on board.

List of rubrics: © Marinha Portugal/dpa