Who Declares an EV as Dangerous Cargo?

On a car carrier, largely nobody — and that is the regulatory design, not an oversight. Under IMDG Special Provision 961, a vehicle carried on a ro-ro ship with flag-approved vehicle spaces falls outside the IMDG Code entirely if its conditions are met. No dangerous-goods declaration, no manifest entry, no data field. The ship loads thousands of lithium packs it is not required to be told anything about.

The exemption, and what it turns off

SP 961 converts a dangerous good into ordinary cargo, conditionally. A vehicle carried on a ro-ro or other ship with vehicle spaces approved by the flag state is not subject to the IMDG Code provided the stated conditions hold — no leakage from fuel systems or batteries, and batteries protected against short circuit. Meet those and the EV ships as non-dangerous goods, which means the shipper owes no DG declaration and the carrier receives none. The same car in a container slot is treated differently: there it must be declared, and SP 962 governs the marking, labelling and placarding relief. Identical hazard, different paperwork, decided entirely by how it was stowed.

What the ship therefore never learns

Everything that would let a crew rank the risk on its own deck. Nothing in the exempted route requires the shipper to disclose cell chemistry, so the deck cannot distinguish an LFP pack from a higher-energy NMC one. Nothing requires a state of charge, so the assumption that units arrive at a low SoC is a booking convention rather than a verified fact. Nothing requires damage or flood history, which is the single most predictive input for an unprovoked vent — and used-vehicle and salvage-export flows are exactly where those cars travel. The result is that the master's cargo knowledge on a deck of thousands of packs is a vehicle count. The exemption did not reduce the hazard; it removed the paperwork that would have described it.

Höegh Xiamen: the condition nobody verified

The exemption's conditions are only as good as the check behind them, and there usually isn't one. SP 961 assumes batteries protected against short circuit. On the Höegh Xiamen at Jacksonville on 4 June 2020, a US Coast Guard sample of 59 loaded vehicles found none with batteries secured to the time charterer's own disconnect procedure — and the NTSB traced the fire to an improperly disconnected battery, with the vessel and 2,420 used vehicles a $40 million total loss. That is not a case of the rule being wrong. It is a case of a condition existing on paper with no verification step attached to it, on a cargo the ship was never required to document.

SP 980 pushes the duty back to the consignor

The IMO has noticed the gap and is closing part of it. At the September 2025 session of the IMDG Code Editorial and Technical Group, a new Special Provision 980 was agreed: consignors must assess the safety condition of vehicles before offering them for shipment, damaged batteries must be removed, and vehicles showing damage or leakage cannot ship without corrective action and evaluation. SP 961 is tightened in the same package — hybrid and lithium-battery vehicles excluded unless carried in ship areas specially built and approved to contain fire, with batteries electrically insulated — and SP 962 extends placarding to cargo transport units carrying vehicles. The changes sit in IMDG Amendment 43-26, for adoption at MSC 111 in 2026, voluntary application from 1 January 2027 and mandatory from 1 January 2028.

A duty to assess is not a duty to tell

This is the part owners should read carefully. SP 980 creates an obligation to evaluate condition and to refuse unsafe units — a real improvement over the current position, where a damaged pack can be driven aboard with no gate at all. What it does not obviously create is a transmission: an assessment performed by the consignor ashore does not by itself become chemistry, state of charge or damage history in the master's hands. And the assessment is visual and documentary, against a failure mode that is frequently neither. A pack damaged weeks earlier in a flood or a minor impact can present as an ordinary car and self-heat days later. The carrier's fallback, the Article IV Rule 6 right to land or destroy undisclosed dangerous cargo, only opens once the carrier has itself shown due diligence — so the shipper's failure is not automatically the carrier's escape.

What it means for owners and underwriters

• Treat the exemption as a data gap, not a safety finding — SP 961 says the Code does not apply, not that the cargo is benign.
• Book the information contractually if the regulation will not supply it: chemistry, declared SoC ceiling, and a damage/flood declaration as booking conditions, since nothing in the exempted route compels them.
• Diarise SP 980 as an operational change, not a filing: voluntary from 1 January 2027, mandatory from 1 January 2028, and it lands on the consignor and the terminal gate, not on the bridge.
• Detection is what covers the residual, because the residual is structural. When the manifest cannot tell you which unit is a risk, the layer that finds a self-heating pack per vehicle is doing the job the declaration never did.
• For underwriters, ask the operator what it actually knows about the packs on board. On the exempted route the honest answer is often 'the count' — and that is a rateable difference from an operator that contracts for the data.

Sources

• 1. IMDG Code Special Provision 961: vehicles carried on ro-ro ships and other ships with vehicle spaces approved by the flag State are not subject to the Code where the stated conditions are met (no leakage from fuel systems or batteries; batteries protected against short circuit); vehicles not meeting SP 961 must be declared as dangerous goods, with marking/labelling/placarding relief available under SP 962 — imo.org. [VERIFY: exact current wording of the SP 961/962 conditions against the in-force IMDG amendment before publish.]
• 2. BIMCO — 'IMO E&T Group advances vehicle transport safety on board ships in IMDG Code' (22 September 2025): new SP 980 requires consignors to assess the safety condition of vehicles before offering them for shipment, damaged batteries to be removed, and damaged or leaking vehicles not to ship without corrective action and evaluation; SP 961 amended to exclude hybrid and lithium-battery vehicles unless in specially built, approved fire-containing ship areas with batteries electrically insulated; SP 962 extended to placarding of cargo transport units. IMDG Amendment 43-26, for adoption at MSC 111 in 2026, voluntary from 1 January 2027, mandatory from 1 January 2028 — bimco.org. [VERIFY: the E&T Group output is reported via BIMCO's summary; confirm SP 980's final text and the amendment dates against the IMO document before publish.]
• 3. NTSB — Marine Accident Report MAR-21/04, 'Fire aboard Vehicle Carrier Höegh Xiamen' (Jacksonville, 4 June 2020): fire originated from an improperly disconnected vehicle battery; a USCG sample of 59 loaded vehicles found none with batteries secured to the time charterer's procedure; vessel and 2,420 used vehicles a $40M total loss — ntsb.gov.
• 4. Hill Dickinson — 'Legal considerations when transporting electric vehicles by sea': SP 961 exempts EVs carried on ro-ro vessels with designated approved storage areas, while EVs in container slots must be declared as dangerous goods; Article IV Rule 6 lets a carrier land or destroy undisclosed dangerous cargo but only where the carrier first demonstrates due diligence; carriers should establish systems to identify EVs and Li-ion batteries in cargo — hilldickinson.com.
• 5. Companion RoRoSAFE analysis — 'Can Battery Passports Screen EV Fire Risk at Loading?' (the data standard that could fill the gap), 'The Vehicle Loading Data Chain: ICS/IGPI Guidance' (how the handoff is supposed to work), and 'Does an EV Fire Make a Ship Unseaworthy?' (why the carrier's due diligence decides whether the shipper's failure helps it).