Have you ever imagined a post-apocalyptic Earth, devoid of oceans, where the shipwrecks of human history are laid out, poking from the sands, their treasurers within reach?

They represent the dreams, terrors, and loot of history. Bones and wood sinking into the fossil record. One day, the things humanity leaves on the ocean floor may be all that’s left of us.

Officially, there are over three million shipwrecks.

Modern-day treasure hunters seek out their $60 billion worth of gold. A waste, really, considering it would be easier to con a Western government out of twice that much on the promise of something vaguely green.

Footage of the Morning Midas, a cargo ship ablaze and stricken in the Pacific Ocean near Alaska, raised the question of what else might be slipping beneath the waves in modern times.

Electric vehicles, for example.

Salvage operations have reached the Morning Midas and its cargo of over 3,000 cars including electric vehicles and hybrids being shipped from China to Mexico. Since being abandoned by its 22 crew members, who were rescued by the US Coast Guard, an uncontrolled fire has been working its way through the ship.

If any of the lithium-ion batteries in those cars have caught fire, they will create a special sort of combustion that is difficult to put out. Even if the cargo ship were to sink, for example, those fires would keep raging beneath the waves for a short time.

Worse, water (in particular salt water), can trigger ignition which is problematic when transporting electric vehicles over the ocean through storms.

A week on from the distress call, newly released photos of the cargo ship show extensive damage to the sides of the vessel. Incredibly, the ship remains stable. It is not listing and, at the time of writing, no one is of the belief that it will sink. Good old robust engineering. The plan appears to be to send tugs out to retrieve the Morning Midas and drag it back to port for evaluation.

There remains hope that the cause of the fire can be confirmed. This is important. Speculation is rife that electric vehicles are to blame. Presently, this is an unfounded guess and nothing more. The last time blame was placed on electric vehicles, it turned out not to be the case.

That is not to suggest that inert electric vehicles are risk free. They can, and do, catch fire.

If the transport industry is tilting toward electric vehicles, determining the risks of transportation, if there are any, is critical to moving forward safely.

There is also a PR battle going on.

Electric vehicles are the public face of the energy transition. They are front and centre of unpopular policy which all-but demands the public migrate whether they like it or not (especially in Europe). People already have their criticisms of electric vehicles, such as range anxiety and durability, so it is understandable why the industry is keen not to add any more problems to the list.

Photographs of EV-carrying cargo ships catching fire have a tendency to cement themselves in the public memory, regardless of whether they caused the trouble or were innocent bystanders. The perceived risk of high-tech lithium-ion cargo has led to insurance hikes for the industry and adaptations to cargo ships to make them suitable for this type of transport.

The material problem is the hostile relationship between water and batteries.

Living in a city that regularly floods, I have personally watched double-stacked tow trucks leave the area piled high with dead EVs. They were being dragged off (to where, I am not sure) while the diesel and petrol cars were resurrected by mechanics. Residents in those areas have switched out their high-tech transport for more traditional models. They are reverting. De-transitioning. Going prehistoric.

The durability of EVs, compared to their less-evolved fossil fuel predecessors, raises some tricky questions about the sanity of creating fragile eco-friendly transport solutions for a world that is headed toward increased weather-related challenges.

It is the same question levelled at solar panels and wind turbines which are flimsy in the face of a storm when compared to nuclear energy and coal-fired power stations.

If our concern is about waste, recycling, and leaving the smallest possible footprint on the planet, it could be argued that the old-fashioned car which continues to chuff-on after 50 years is better overall than China’s disturbing fields of discarded e-bikes, e-cars, and e-scooters.

In Australia, it is very difficult to find out exactly what happens to electric vehicles at the end of their life. There are plenty of articles talking about what could be possible and what sort of recycling they would like to see. These are interesting conversations, but many people are wondering how many eco-friendly cars actually end up in landfill or rotting in a junk yard.

Data suggests there are a quarter of a million full electric cars in Australia and there are concerns that, given the young age of Australia’s industry, we lack the capacity to handle the scale of the decommissioning required in the near future.

It is baffling that the Labor Party, so keen to push the adoption of EVs through coercive policy and market interference, has not put the effort into end-of-life systems.

Instead of asking how many electric cars are at the bottom of the ocean, perhaps I should have asked how many are rotting in China’s technology graveyards… They are piling up thanks to the waste associated with manipulated markets typical of interfering governments that attempted to force a product onto consumers who were not ready.

For those curious as to why China is shipping so many cars to Mexico, China is their primary supplier. The industry, according to the Mexican Ministry of Economy, is worth $4.6 billion and dominated by BYD.

BYD is the Chinese EV manufacturer which is set to conquer Australia with car publications writing nervous articles about an imminent price war that might wipe out the domestic market.

So far, there is little-to-no interest from the Albanese government when it comes to market protection.

Labor is not as careful as Donald Trump, who slapped huge tariffs on Chinese imports. As a result, American manufacturing has enjoyed a spike in confidence and job creation entirely out of reach to Australia, despite our Labor government pretending to care about workers.

The Morning Midas is probably not destined to become a shipwreck. Not yet, anyway.

I am not sure the same can be said for our domestic car market.