Panic Button Pressed: America’s Largest Shipping Firm Refuses to Carry Electric Cars

Not long ago, electric vehicles were hailed as saviors of the planet, the only viable road to the future. Now that vision is cracking—sharply. Without ceremony or spin, Matson, one of America’s largest shipping conglomerates, has abruptly announced it will no longer transport electric or hybrid vehicles. The reason: fire risk. More precisely—a toxic, uncontrollable, re-igniting inferno courtesy of lithium-ion batteries.

The decision follows yet another disaster. The ship Morning Midas caught fire, burned, and sank. Not the first, and unlikely to be the last. In 2022, it was the Felicity Ace. A year later, the Fremantle Highway. These fires aren’t extinguishable. Batteries can reignite days later. As if that weren’t enough, they release lethal fumes that turn rescue operations into grotesque theatre.

Some German cities have already banned EVs from underground garages. A Norwegian ferry operator has taken it further—no electric or hybrid vehicles on board. The time for blind optimism is over.

The market, too, is pulling back. General Motors has quietly stepped away from its ambitious plan to phase out internal combustion engines by 2035. Ford, Volkswagen—even Mercedes, once the flagship of green marketing—all appear to be glancing back at combustion.

In the U.S., federal EV incentives expire on September 30. Thousands of dollars in rebates for new and used electric cars will vanish. And consumers will be left to face the hard truth: the promised revolution was a marketing exercise. China’s “green graveyards” are filling with unsold cars. The market doesn’t care about utopias. It cares about technology that works.

It’s time to say it plainly—the world wasn’t ready. And maybe it doesn’t need to be.