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Worlds largest electric ship launched by Tasmanian boatbuilder
- NooneAtAll3 10mo agoI hope that such a flat roof will be covered in solar
- victorbjorklund 10mo agoProbably more efficient to keep inverters, panels etc on land.
- phinnaeus 10mo agoI’m not a sparky but would you need inverters if the panels are just for charging batteries? On the other hand, there is probably already inverters onboard to provide AC power to passenger power points.
- servo_sausage 10mo agoNo, you need some kind of DC converter to regulate voltage, but no inherent requirement to go to AC. Lots of small camping and off grid systems do that. Although at the scale of a one off boat i would think it's cheaper to use the more widespread systems for bigger grid connected panel installations; so you are back to inverters.
- NooneAtAll3 10mo agomore efficient to leave surface unused?
- servo_sausage 10mo agoSame reason EVs rarely have solar panels; adds weight and complexity, making it more expensive than putting the panels somewhere less wet and salty.
- SideburnsOfDoom 10mo ago... and doesn't add significant charge. > The surface area of a standard car simply isn’t big enough to hold the sheer volume of solar panels that would be needed to capture a meaningful amount of energy from the sun. https://octopusev.com/ev-hub/why-dont-electric-cars-have-solar-panels https://octopusev.com/ev-hub/why-dont-electric-cars-have-sol... > there just isn’t enough space on top of cars to make a meaningful contribution to the charging needs of the battery https://www.forbes.com/sites/billroberson/2022/11/30/why-doesnt-every-electric-car-have-solar-panels/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/billroberson/2022/11/30/why-doe... The same must be true of a ship. Put the larger solar panel installations at the places where the vehicles charge.
- scraptor 10mo agoMore efficient to spend the same amount of money on shoreside panels with lower installation costs.
- bell-cot 10mo agoTalk to a marine engineer about the overhead (equipment, training, emergency procedures, etc.) of adding a small-scale solar plant to all the things that they've already got to deal with on a ship. And recall that this bridge - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Scott_Key_Bridge_(Baltimore) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Scott_Key_Bridge_(Balt... - will need a multi-billion dollar replacement, because the tiny engineering staff of a huge freighter could not diagnose and correct a surprise electrical failure. Within the maybe 3 1/2 minutes between the initial fault, and when the collision became physically inevitable.
- jeltz 10mo agoDo you have solar panels on top of your head? If not why do you leave that space unused? Space being there is one of the worst possible reasons. That bloats designs and makes them expensive to build and maintain.
- victorbjorklund 10mo agoYes, it is more efficient to install it on land. The installation will be cheaper, maintainance will be cheaper and the panels will last longer.
- reactordev 10mo agoYou would be consuming fossil fuels to charge a ship when the sun is giving you energy for free. At least capture some of that to charge some batteries or extend the length of your voyage.
- WJW 10mo agoThe energy is not free, since the solar panels cost money and don't last forever. Even at optimistic prices, it's still something like 0.03 USD/kWh. Install them on a boat and they have to deal with constant vibrations, humid conditions, seagulls shitting all over them, etc etc etc. I used to work on ships and almost everything constantly breaks down without constant maintenance. I bet it would be much cheaper to put the solar panels on land and charge the ship when it's in port.
- teiferer 10mo agoThat may all be true, but there are other benefits that could make it worth it. For example it could be, in theory, self-sufficient forever if something else breaks down making it unable to maneuver. Then you can at least sit in the middle of the sea and have your heating and cooking and desalination working until you repair the propulsion.
- padjo 10mo agoYou already have MWh of batteries for that.
- reactordev 10mo agoNo you don’t because after a few days broken down, they are drained without solar.
- reactordev 10mo agoI sailed around the world on a sailboat with solar. I know. It’s still better than none at all. The energy is free. To capture it costs a little bit of money.
- dzhiurgis 10mo agoI doubt it but it deff goes well with roro batteries too.
- red75prime 10mo agoIt should take around 50 hours to fully charge its batteries under ideal conditions. That is 5 - 10 days realistically. I guess it's impractical considering that it will ferry across the River Plate.
- reactordev 10mo agoAny flat surface on a ship that is designed for electric should be covered in flexible solar panels. Why do this if it can’t fully charge the ship? To offset the costs of charging the ship at port, to provide longer range by providing a lower voltage power source for 12V DC charging (cell phones, iPads, 5w LED lights). So the commenter is correct, she needs panels and the fact that this isn’t part of the launch shows that they were more interested in being first than practical.
- servo_sausage 10mo agoIt's not a long range vessel, but it should have a fairly long service life. Additional weight and complexity on a one off boat would be more expensive than a seperate much more standard solar and battery system on land. And you might be able to get additional value out of selling electricity from an oversized storage. It's not sensible to draw your system boundaries around the boat by itself; there is significant terminal infrastructure; and even grid electrical infrastructure to consider.
- reactordev 10mo agoI disagree entirely about complexity. It’s not complex at all. I don’t draw a boundary around the boat. I see a missed opportunity to power non-drive electronics from a renewable source such as solar.
- red75prime 10mo agoWhat exactly is the benefit of having solar panels on the ship? Her accumulators are more than capable of supplying all the electric needs during her ferry trips. Placing 0.002 square kilometer of solar panels on land is cheaper.
- rasz 10mo agoSolar roof is a bunk idea. In case of cars, trucks and this ferry you can gain whole 1-3 additional minutes of operation per whole day of perfect solar radiation.
- OhioMan2943 10mo agoSpent 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
- DemocracyFTW2 10mo agoUgly as hell as far as ships go. Ugly as hell like almost all new cars, trains and buildings.
- trebligdivad 10mo agoDoes 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.
- pjc50 10mo agoGoogle supplied me with this original spec: https://incat.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Mini-Spec-130m.pdf https://incat.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Mini-Spec-13... Same ship, originally specced to carry tens of thousands of liters of oil. No overall displacement number, oddly.
- sparklysoup 10mo ago700-ish tonnes - it's in the wikipedia article: "In 2020, Buquebus originally commissioned Incat to deliver a new ship to use dual-fuel propulsion, capable of operating on liquefied natural gas and diesel, with around 400 tonne of main engines, 100 tonne gearboxes, 100 tonne cryogenic fuel tanks and 100 tonne fuel." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Zorrilla_(ship) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Zorrilla_(ship)
- jillesvangurp 10mo agoThe 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-largest-electric-vehicle-in-the-world/ 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.
- tedk-42 10mo agoArticle quotes `40 megawatt-hours of installed capacity.` - Surely this can get you pretty far from Tasmania to South America.
- chii 10mo agoapparently, 40MWh of capacity is enough to travel 40 nautical miles. The distance between Tasmania and South America is around 6,500–7,500 nautical miles.
- amelius 10mo agoFor comparison, a wide body airliner needs ~0.15MWh to travel 1 nautical mile.
- eesmith 10mo agoA wide body airliner doesn't carry "up to 2,100 passengers and 225 vehicles".
- verandaguy 10mo ago
- EB-Barrington 10mo ago[dead]
- cfn 10mo agoI 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.
- senko 10mo agoAs a comparison, in my banana country they spent €7.7m on a beat up old Greek ICE ferry that isn't even up to local safety standards[0]. Compared to that, €35m or so for a new modern vessel doesn't sound outrageous. [0] https://www.morski.hr/jadrolinija-za-7-7-milijuna-eura-kupuje-polovni-grcki-trajekt-koji-ne-ispunjava-hrvatske-propise/ https://www.morski.hr/jadrolinija-za-7-7-milijuna-eura-kupuj...
- cfn 10mo agoI had no idea that would be the cost of a ferry albeit old. We have a massive problem with transportation between islands due to lack of ships/investment. For example, out of the 9 islands only three have daily voyages and right now even that isn't happening as one boat broke down and another is away on maintenance. We could do we a couple even old ones. The main issue I saw here with the electric ferry was that 90% of the installed generation in the islands uses HFO so we would be charging the ferry with a fuel that pollutes more than the diesel used to run it.
- araes 10mo agoGeneral survey of ferry prices in the 25+ meter range to give you an idea. Length number can be changed to filter for longer / shorter. There's 37 in the 25+ range, 19 in the 50+ range, and 11 in the 100+ range currently, although a few false positives on the keyword matches. https://www.yachtworld.com/boats-for-sale/length-25/keyword-Ferry/ https://www.yachtworld.com/boats-for-sale/length-25/keyword-...
- toast0 10mo agoSize of the ferry will make a big difference. A small ferry is going to cost a lot less than this 225 car ferry. My quick reading is the Azore ferries hold about 8 cars; that's a totally different class of vehicle. My local ferry system has an electrification project[1]; the current active project is three 160-car hybrid-electric ferries for a total cost of $714.5 million. A NZ shipbuilder is probably more competitive than a US shipbuilder, and details matter.... This article says $200M [2] which is a lot lower than I expected, given it's a one-off and larger (I think) than the WSDOT 160-car ferries. [1] https://wsdot.wa.gov/construction-planning/major-projects/ferry-system-electrification https://wsdot.wa.gov/construction-planning/major-projects/fe... [2] https://www.ro.com.uy/2025/10/16/nuevo-barco-china-zorrilla-de-buquebus-estara-operativo-en-enero/ https://www.ro.com.uy/2025/10/16/nuevo-barco-china-zorrilla-...
- cush 10mo ago250 tonnes of batteries…
- SideburnsOfDoom 10mo agoPreviously, 55 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45844832 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45844832 Discussion on a different article, about the same boat.
- TinyBig 10mo agoI'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.
- ihaveone 10mo agoIt 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.
- walrus01 10mo agoYour math is far off. If you put 60kW (STC rating) of PV panels as quantity 100 of 600W premium panels on top, in Uruguay, it'll produce somewhere between 6800 to 8100 kWh per month if the panels are perfectly exposed to sun from sunrise to sunset. If we say it's 7500kWh a month that's something like 250 kWh of production per day, which is a tiny drop in the bucket compared to the amount of energy needed to charge the ferry.
- bertil 10mo agoI’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.
- djoldman 10mo agoSome cool pics of construction components: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-02/incat-launches-worlds-largest-battery-electric-ship-hull096/105243498 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-02/incat-launches-worlds...
- djoldman 10mo agoIt 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 https://spectrum.ieee.org/electric-boat-battery-ship-ferry
- phibz 10mo agoCalling it the largest electric ship seems wrong or at least requires extra specificity compared to nuclear aircraft carriers.
- jbotz 10mo agoThe propulsion of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers isn't electric... it's driven directly from the steam produced by the reactors. Edit: At least that's the case for US Nimitz-class aircraft carriers. Nuclear submarines apparently come in both types, with electric motors or direct drive steam-turbines, but I guess this ferry is bigger than any of those.
- jcrawfordor 10mo agoThere have been diesel electric surface ships as well going back to WWII, although it hasn't proven a very popular design and they remain an oddity.
- maelito 10mo agoHow many km does it operate ? Edit : 50 km according to another comment
- Frenchgeek 10mo agoAnd they could have called it "Androids dream" but didn't....
- master_crab 10mo agoCan 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?