by jillesvangurp
10 subcomments
- The Guardian article glosses over a few things that are actually interesting about this ship:
- It's made out of aluminum instead of steel. The resulting weight savings make it a bit more efficient. That's something this shipping yard specializes in.
- Because it is going to run in shallow water on the river Plate, it doesn't actually have propellers but a water jet propulsion system.
Fully charged did a video on the construction of this ship early last year: https://fullycharged.show/episodes/electric-ferry-the-larges...
The project of getting this ship from Tasmania to South America is also going to be interesting as well. It can't do it under its own power; it's designed for a ~50km crossing, not a trans Pacific/Atlantic journey. At the time, they were thinking tug boats.
- I've taken one of the electric roll-on/roll-off ferries that cross from Denmark to Sweden over the Øresund strait. Zero fumes, zero vibration, incredibly quiet. Awesome to see this tech being used for longer crossings.
- Spent a few months down in Hobart sussing out an antarctic science degree- really cool marine industry nexus down there with world leading research, all of the antarctic operations, and this stuff. Definitely the most nautical feeling city in Australia
- I would like to know its price. Here in the Azores Islands there was a project to replace an ICE ferry with an electric one but they couldn't agree on the price with the boat builders. It went up to as much as 35 million Euros but it ended up being cancelled as that, apparently, wasn't enough for a ferry that can do 1-1.5 hour crossings with a dozen cars or so.
- It took a bit of digging but it looks like the ship can operate for 90 minutes without recharging:
> ... the batteries will power eight axial-flow water jets driven by permanent magnet electric motors. These will be able to keep the ship going for 90 minutes before needing to be recharged.
> The ship’s permanent home will be the Rio de la Plata estuary, where it will travel between the ports of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay. The two cities are 60 kilometers apart, a distance Hull 096 is expected to travel in 90 minutes. Direct-current charging stations will be installed at each port and will draw energy from the two countries’ grids. A full charge is expected to take just 40 minutes.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/electric-boat-battery-ship-ferry
- Some cool pics of construction components:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-02/incat-launches-worlds...
- Calling it the largest electric ship seems wrong or at least requires extra specificity compared to nuclear aircraft carriers.
- I’m curious if it would have made sense to build it as a hydrofoil. There are a couple of electric boat companies that use that to reduce drag, wake and improve comfort on-board. The software to keep things level is non-trivial, but I don’t know if it adds a lot of complexity to the build.
by SideburnsOfDoom
0 subcomment
- Previously, 55 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45844832
Discussion on a different article, about the same boat.
by master_crab
0 subcomment
- Can anyone elif why it makes sense to build a boat with 250 tones of batteries as opposed to building a generator/motor combo that many ships and trains use now?
- It looks like they could have mounted at least 100 solar modules on top, if not 200. That's 600-1200kwDC, given its flat, at 800kwp/kWh, that means for an hour of peak production, after losses, would do at least 300kwh for the smaller size and 600kwh for the larger size. If each trip is around 1150kwh and takes longer than an hour, more than half of the power required could be generated. As solar modules are solid-state devices, seems short sighted to not slam a system on the roof. PV modules are literally just glass sandwiches with wires and DC to DC battery chargers are very efficient. The weight would also be partly counter-acted by using the modules as the skin for the roof.
by trebligdivad
2 subcomments
- Does anyone have a feel for how heavy the weight of an equivalent oil(?) driven ship would be? It has the big number for the weight of batteries, but I've got nothing to compare against.
by NooneAtAll3
3 subcomments
- I hope that such a flat roof will be covered in solar
by Frenchgeek
0 subcomment
- And they could have called it "Androids dream" but didn't....
- 250 tonnes of batteries…
- How many km does it operate ?
Edit : 50 km according to another comment
by EB-Barrington
0 subcomment
- [dead]
by DemocracyFTW2
0 subcomment
- Ugly as hell as far as ships go. Ugly as hell like almost all new cars, trains and buildings.
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