The Felicity Ace car carrier, which caught fire with nearly 4000 VW Group vehicles aboard near the coast of the Azores last month, has sunk according to reports from Automotive News Europe.
It is believed that shifting cargo, or accumulation of water on the cargo decks, could have caused destabilisation.
“The weather was pretty rough out there,” MOL Ship Management spokesperson Pat Adamson said. “Then she sank, which was a surprise.”
The wreck is likely to be thousands of metres under the sea. On board of the 17-year-old roll-on/roll-on vessel were a total of 3965 new vehicles including Volkswagen models, approximately 189 Bentleys, 1100 Porsches, and “a number of Lamborghinis”, a Volkswagen Group spokesperson said at the time.
Last week, Reuters quoted João Mendes Cabeças, captain of the port in the Azorean island of Faial, as saying “the intervention (to put out the blaze) has to be done very slowly. It will take a while”.
Mr Cabeças said that because traditional water extinguishers could not stop lithium-ion batteries from burning, the EVs’ components were “keeping the fire alive”, adding that specialist equipment to extinguish the blaze was on the way. It was not clear what had started the fire.
Volkswagen had feared that large numbers (if not most) of the cars on the vessel would not be salvageable, with brands and dealers notifying customers that the US-bound vehicles likely wouldn’t be delivered. Damage to the cars is covered by insurance, the automaker had said last week.
In a projection (with the assumption that all vehicles would be lost), the risk-modelling company Russell Group estimated that the incident could cost the VW Group at least $155 million (A$213 million), Automotive News Europe reported. About $438 million (A$603 million) worth of goods were aboard the vessel (retail value), of which the cars were $401 million (A$564 million)