I don't think I'd park an EV in an attached garage, or any garage. Then there is no danger of me ever owning one either.
July 28, 2025
Major Shipping Line Matson Closes the Hatch on Transport of Electrical Vehicles
By John F. Di Leo
Matson Inc., a major ocean cargo carrier in the trans-Pacific trade, announced this week that they have decided to stop carrying electric vehicles and hybrid vehicles on their ships, effective immediately.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/07/major_shipping_line_matson_closes_the_hatch_on_transport_of_electrical_vehicles.htmlSome in the industry were shocked and upset.
Matson, after all, has never had a ship sink as a result of an EV fire. What are they worried about?
But there have been three especially severe EV fires on cargo ships in just the past three years: the Felicity Ace in 2022, the Fremantle Highway in 2023, and most recently, the Morning Midas in 2025, each fire destroying thousands of vehicles each along with much or all of the vessels.
In the Fremantle Highway fire, one crewman died and sixteen more were injured, and the ship needed to be largely rebuilt and renamed.
In the Felicity Ace fire, all the crew members escaped without injury, but the ship sank, taking its cargo with it to the bottom of the ocean. A total loss.
In the most recent incident, the Morning Midas caught fire off the coast of Alaska , in the North Pacific; no injuries this time, but again the ship was a total loss.
In each case, many in the industry insist on denying the evidence in front of their eyes: despite eyewitness reports that each of these fires started in an electric car, some reporters and industry analysts, politically desperate to defend their precious EVs, insist that the cause of these fires is still unproven. The evidence, after all, is hundreds of meters deep and utterly out of reach.
Matson, however, has no doubt, and neither have an increasing number of others in the transportation industry.
Statisticians will tell you that traditional gasoline-powered vehicles are more likely to be involved in car fires, and that’s true, but that’s not the whole story. When ICE vehicles catch fire, it’s normally because they’ve been in a serious collision, resulting in an explosion. But we have seen electric vehicle batteries catch fire almost spontaneously, from the mere exposure of the battery to water. No collision necessary.
It rains outdoors almost everywhere in the populated world; driving on a typical road means going through puddles and splashing water up into the undercarriage all the time. And when sailing on a ship, the saltwater of the earth’s oceans is practically unavoidable. A car simply has to be able to handle that.
Worse, once an electric car’s massive lithium battery catches fire, that fire is often impossible to put out; these vehicles burn for days, consuming not just the car but everything nearby, from parking garage to cargo ship.
It is therefore impossible to deny that Matson is just being rational here, in their decision to stop running this risk at all, at least until the industry can find a way to put an end to the possibility of practically spontaneous combustion.
There are only a few kinds of cargo with this kind of risk. Explosives, fireworks, ammunition, and certain other types of HazMat cargo can run similar risks of creating a fast-spreading fire, but most do not.
Typically in the marine transportation world, if a container suffers damage, it won’t affect many of the other containers in its vicinity. EV batteries are special; when one catches fire, it burns so long, so hot, and so uncontrollably, that the fire easily spreads to other welcome hosts, the entire deck, even the entire ship.
And EVs are usually shipped by the dozens, or by the hundreds – and if the “environmentalist” lobby has their way – by the thousands.
It’s easy to see why Matson made the decision they did. Their ships cost hundreds of millions of dollars; the cargo they carry is worth hundreds of millions as well. And each ship has about two dozen crewmen aboard.
At a certain point, no matter how popular a product may be, one must weigh its risks against its value, and realize that carrying certain cargo is just not a good investment; the business model comes at too great a cost.
By refusing to carry EVs and hybrids anymore, Matson ensures that the traditional gasoline-powered vehicles they carry will be safer; that’s worth more to their ICE customers, or at least, it will be, when this rationality sinks in.
Electric Vehicles already have a challenging business model, even without this newest problem:
EVs are more expensive than comparable traditional vehicles; they require generous government subsidies, not to make them cheap, but just to make them not quite so much more expensive.
EVs have such an energy-intensive manufacturing process, using so much petroleum and so many difficult-to-mine rare earths in their manufacture, that it doesn’t approach the level of environmental friendliness that the green crowd imagines, and one day that green crowd is bound to realize this unpleasant truth.
EVs require charging from the electric grid, a grid made more costly and undependable every year as nations foolishly reduce their use of “energy that works” (nuclear, coal, oil, natural gas) and increase their use of costly and inefficient “energy that doesn’t work” (wind and solar), reducing the ability of that electric grid to serve its customers. Eventually, after more and more multi-hour waits for ever more expensive grid energy, these consumers are bound to realize that shortcoming as well.
More and more insurance companies, parking garages, and even neighborhoods are waking up to this fire risk and raising the possibility of resisting insuring EVs, or even allowing EVs to be kept in their properties, because of the way that these batteries have been known to cause uncontrollable fires.
After a few years, when these batteries need to be replaced, owners find that the cost of replacement is incredible, often two or three times as much as a whole transmission or engine job on a traditional car.
EVs have their positives, of course – some have luxury, comfort, a smooth ride, even good handling in the right hands. But are these positives sufficient to make up for the negatives?
EVs are likely still in too early a stage of development to be a good deal for most manufacturers and most consumers, and the evidence is growing that they aren’t a good deal for government, for the insurance sector, or for the transportation sector, either.
Many have wondered for years what it would take for society to finally stand up and resist this premature market saturation of electric vehicles – would it be the price, the oddity, the inconvenience?
Who would have thought that one of the first major steps toward bringing common sense to this marketplace would be the realization by transportation companies that – for now at least – they just aren’t worth the risk to transport them at all?
