Rolls-Royce has revealed that it has several vehicles onboard the Fremantle Highway, a massive cargo ship that caught fire over a week ago and was recently towed to the Netherlands.
It is understood that there were 3,783 vehicles on the ship when the fire broke out. Of those, 498 were EVs and both BMW and Mercedes-Benz have confirmed they each have several hundred vehicles on board.
It remains unclear exactly how many Rolls-Royce models are on the ship but a spokesperson from the car manufacturer told Bloomberg that it is contacting affected customers.
Read: Nearly 500 EVs Are On Board That Cargo Ship Burning In The Ocean
Unlike the Felicity Ace cargo ship that caught fire in early 2022 and sank, not all of the vehicles on the Fremantle Highway have been destroyed. In fact, salvage company Boskalis believes that around 800 vehicles are undamaged, although a precise figure won’t be known until the salvage efforts begin in earnest.
The exact cause for the fire is not yet known but it has been speculated that the blaze started with one of the EVs before quickly spreading. The fire killed one crew member and many others jumped overboard to escape the inferno. Fortunately, skilled crews were able to extinguish the blaze and the ship arrived at a port in the Netherlands late last week.
“The fire started in some of the top decks,” chief executive of salvage company Royal Boskalis Westminster NV, Peter A M Berdowski, told Bloomberg. “We assume the eighth deck, that’s in a very poor state. Part of it is completely collapsed and it’s heavily, heavily destructed. We don’t know what the source was of the fire. Having said that, I think all experts with any knowledge on this topic agree that the transportation of electric vehicles introduces additional risks.”