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My honest question is does the economics of a larger crew impact the competitivity of the offering? 250 tons is nothing to sneeze at for things like gulf seafo

My honest question is does the economics of a larger crew impact the competitivity of the offering? 250 tons is nothing to sneeze at for things like gulf seafood shipping Edit: this is a huge deal for seafood in my opinion because your total fuel is impacted by the need to maintain a balance between range and what you dedicate to running walk in freezers on the ship for your catch.

actionfromafar 4y ago
I forget the calculations, but there would have to be like hundreds of thousands of these ships at all times with millions of crew to make a dent the cargo carried in container ships.
- gpm 4y ago
  Aren't you just say "the total addressable market is huge"? That sounds like a good thing for the company trying it.
  - actionfromafar 4y ago
    Sure, given they can compete commercially against containerships. The baseline would be like launching a new containership which is just as good, except it has a couple of thousand crew instead of a dozen. Uphill battle...
    - gpm 4y ago
      I assume the goal would be to automate the management of the sails so that the crew could still be only a dozen or so large. Replacing crew with computers and electric motors. Otherwise I would be surprised if you could even make a good faith argument that this will be commercially viable.
      - bg46z 4y ago
        Most sailing yachts have this system, and it is generally prone to failure
  - crote 4y ago
    The size of the market doesn't really matter when your product is not competitive. As a back-of-the-envelope calculation, shipping a 20ft container from Shenzhen to Los Angeles is about $1200 and takes about 14 days. Assuming you can sail at the same speed, and considering this sail ship has a capacity of about 10 containers, that is a revenue of $24000 / month. In reality you'll only be able to sail 100 to 150 miles a day, so crossing those 6500 miles will take you to 43 to 65 days - or a revenue of $5100-$7800 / month. How are you going to run your ship for that little, considering you need 12 crew (and 12 additional "guest crew")?
    - superice 4y ago
      Don't forget that included in that $1200 number there is also the rent of the container, which covers well over that 14 days since you need time to stuff and strip the container with cargo on both sides of the ocean leg.
superice 4y ago
It is something to sneeze at. That’s about 10 shipping containers. Current gen container ships can hold 15-25k twenty foot containers. Even inland barges are typically 10x bigger than this.
- m463 4y ago
  hmmm... seems like large container ships hold 18k TEU (~twenty-foot containers) and use 21,000 gallons of fuel per day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_E-class_container_ship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_E-class_container_ship It seems like ~ 1 gallon of fuel per day per container shipping across the pacific is 15-30 days, from asia to europe is 30-45 days. seems pretty efficient, per container. Probably dwarfed by the costs of getting the container to and from the ship.
  - superice 4y ago
    Definitely. Commercial pricing for a move of a container from ship to shore and vice versa ranges between 30 and 70 euros here in Europe (Rotterdam/Antwerp). Even if you compare fuel usage against inland barges, which capacity-wise are much closer, they use something on the order of magnitude of 25 metric tons of fuel every 2 to 3 weeks or so, depending on cruising speed and number of stops of course. Assuming about a 208 TEU capacity, and 1.8 tons of fuel a day, that'd be roughly 2 or 3 gallons of fuel per container per day. People tend to really underestimate how ridiculously efficient ships are per unit of cargo shipped. Realistically, if you want to make a difference in emissions right now, figure out a way to move inland shipping (the port-to-actual-destination leg) from trucks onto trains and barges, only doing last-mile trucking. I don't think the barrier to that happening is actually technical, nor is it financial because those modes tend to be cheaper. The economics around these modes of transport are well established. It's primarily that they are slower, so you tie up a lot of cashflow into goods in-transit. Because the cost of shipping is so low relative to the cost of the goods itself, it typically does not make sense to save pennies on the transport while tying up serious cashflow for longer. I'm honestly surprised there is no financial institution that has made a financial product around financing the cashflow gap created by greener modes of transport: the pay-off is predictable, and the risks are low.

actionfromafar 4y ago

I forget the calculations, but there would have to be like hundreds of thousands of these ships at all times with millions of crew to make a dent the cargo carried in container ships.

gpm 4y ago
Aren't you just say "the total addressable market is huge"? That sounds like a good thing for the company trying it.
- actionfromafar 4y ago
  Sure, given they can compete commercially against containerships. The baseline would be like launching a new containership which is just as good, except it has a couple of thousand crew instead of a dozen. Uphill battle...
  - gpm 4y ago
    I assume the goal would be to automate the management of the sails so that the crew could still be only a dozen or so large. Replacing crew with computers and electric motors. Otherwise I would be surprised if you could even make a good faith argument that this will be commercially viable.
    - bg46z 4y ago
      Most sailing yachts have this system, and it is generally prone to failure
- crote 4y ago
  The size of the market doesn't really matter when your product is not competitive. As a back-of-the-envelope calculation, shipping a 20ft container from Shenzhen to Los Angeles is about $1200 and takes about 14 days. Assuming you can sail at the same speed, and considering this sail ship has a capacity of about 10 containers, that is a revenue of $24000 / month. In reality you'll only be able to sail 100 to 150 miles a day, so crossing those 6500 miles will take you to 43 to 65 days - or a revenue of $5100-$7800 / month. How are you going to run your ship for that little, considering you need 12 crew (and 12 additional "guest crew")?
  - superice 4y ago
    Don't forget that included in that $1200 number there is also the rent of the container, which covers well over that 14 days since you need time to stuff and strip the container with cargo on both sides of the ocean leg.

superice 4y ago

It is something to sneeze at. That’s about 10 shipping containers. Current gen container ships can hold 15-25k twenty foot containers. Even inland barges are typically 10x bigger than this.

m463 4y ago
hmmm... seems like large container ships hold 18k TEU (~twenty-foot containers) and use 21,000 gallons of fuel per day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_E-class_container_ship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_E-class_container_ship It seems like ~ 1 gallon of fuel per day per container shipping across the pacific is 15-30 days, from asia to europe is 30-45 days. seems pretty efficient, per container. Probably dwarfed by the costs of getting the container to and from the ship.
- superice 4y ago
  Definitely. Commercial pricing for a move of a container from ship to shore and vice versa ranges between 30 and 70 euros here in Europe (Rotterdam/Antwerp). Even if you compare fuel usage against inland barges, which capacity-wise are much closer, they use something on the order of magnitude of 25 metric tons of fuel every 2 to 3 weeks or so, depending on cruising speed and number of stops of course. Assuming about a 208 TEU capacity, and 1.8 tons of fuel a day, that'd be roughly 2 or 3 gallons of fuel per container per day. People tend to really underestimate how ridiculously efficient ships are per unit of cargo shipped. Realistically, if you want to make a difference in emissions right now, figure out a way to move inland shipping (the port-to-actual-destination leg) from trucks onto trains and barges, only doing last-mile trucking. I don't think the barrier to that happening is actually technical, nor is it financial because those modes tend to be cheaper. The economics around these modes of transport are well established. It's primarily that they are slower, so you tie up a lot of cashflow into goods in-transit. Because the cost of shipping is so low relative to the cost of the goods itself, it typically does not make sense to save pennies on the transport while tying up serious cashflow for longer. I'm honestly surprised there is no financial institution that has made a financial product around financing the cashflow gap created by greener modes of transport: the pay-off is predictable, and the risks are low.