Car freighter on fire in the Pacific – cause remains unclear

A car freighter has caught fire in the North Pacific. There were 3,048 vehicles on board the ‘Morning Midas’, including 70 purely electric cars and 681 hybrid vehicles - which is already fuelling lots of speculation about the cause of the accident.

Image: U.S. Coast Guard photo courtesy of Roland Hobson

In addition to the vehicles, 350 tonnes of gas fuel and 1,530 tonnes of low-sulphur fuel oil are said to still be on the ship off the coast of Alaska, according to a statement from the US Coast Guard. The 22 crew members evacuated the ship and have been picked up by a container ship travelling nearby and taken to safety. The cause of the fire is not yet known. The US Coast Guard decided to let the ship burn out, according to the New York Times.

However, this has not stopped some media from speculating about this unknown cause. Although only a fraction of the cargo is made up of electric cars, there are headlines about a “freighter with electric cars” or talk of “highly flammable lithium-ion batteries.” The US news agency Bloomberg even writes that it is “unclear at this stage which brand’s electric vehicle caught fire,” but acknowledged that the sources of this information did not want to be identified in connection with the preliminary findings. At this stage, the Coast Guard, which is conducting the rescue, has only stated that the cause remains unknown. However, the New York Times report states that the crew noticed smoke on a deck where electric vehicles were located. It is unclear whether these were battery-electric cars or the unspecified hybrid cars.

The case is quite reminiscent of that of the ‘Fremantle Highway’. The car freighter caught fire on the North Sea in 2023, and the electric cars on board were quickly identified as the cause. However, when the ship was towed to a harbour and unloaded after the fire, it turned out that the electric cars were in good condition and virtually undamaged, and could not have been the cause of the fire.

Update 25 June, 2025:

The freighter “Morning Midas” shipping electric cars has sunk. An official report on the cause of the fire is still pending, and a further investigation of the ship is now likely to be almost impossible. The speculative narrative of batteries as the cause of the fire suggested by many media outlets is therefore likely to persist.

According to AP, it was not clear whether or how many vehicles were removed before it sank. The freighter sank in international waters off Alaska’s Aleutian Islands chain.

nytimes.com, bloomberg.com, uscg.mil, update: