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Comment by MuffinFlavored | Hacker News Reader

> Ferries are by far the most polluting form of transportation today

Interesting

The video also says that if it didn't plane up into hydrofoil-mode, it'd need to use enough energy to push 12 tons (full weight) through water. How much does it need to push in hydro-foil mode/what kind of percentage reduction are we looking at?

It fits 30, 20, or 12 passengers depending on configuration and cost €1.7m. Which EU country is willing to buy like... 100 of these?

It can't be cheap to ride if it can only hold 30 passengers max?

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There are quite a few ferries with capacity around 30 passengers in service in Sweden. Most of them burning diesel.

There are? Where?

In the archipelagos near Stockholm and Gothenburg, for example. There's a list of the nationally financed routes here:

https://www.trafikverket.se/resa-och-trafik/farjetrafik/

Then there are regionally and locally financed routes as well.

The ferries in that link are all road ferries. Most of them take at least 30 cars, and a lot more than 30 passengers.

Most of the archipelago ferries in Gothenburg take around 300 passengers. The smallest one I could find on Styrsöbolaget's site takes 165:

https://www.styrsobolaget.se/om-oss/fartyg/rivo

While not a ferry, it looks like Sweden has water taxis.

Looking around I found a few listed at https://visitsweden.com/about-sweden/getting-around-stockhol... , for example, https://www.battaxi.se/our-boats says the m/s Alma ("Our fast all-round boat") carries 20.

I also found https://waxholmwatertaxi.com/services/taxi-boat/?lang=en says "We offer Taxi Boat for 1-12 passengers throughout the Stockholm archipelago."

I can imagine some people might pay good money for significantly faster transport + "eco friendly".

All those are private options for tourists and natural clients for Cadela; they explicitly want to go after the Commuter ferries 80, 82, 83, 89 [0]

Each of those lines has a dozen boats to guarantee frequent service. Including the private options you listed, there are more than 100 boats in Stockholm alone, with 30 passengers or more.

Every city in Scandinavia would likely want something similar; some (Olso, Copenhagen, Helsinki) already have a boat network for commuters and tourists, but every city on that list [1] has a bus network, is around a body of water, and would interested in a non-polluting option.

I’d be surprised if they couldn’t sell thousands for public transport in the region alone — let alone lakes in the Alps, shuttles in the Mediterranean and more.

[0] https://sl.se/en/in-english/getting-around/sl-service-networ...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_urban_areas_in_the_Nor...

The ferry between Kyrkesund and Härön is a good example. Yes, sorry for the Swedish chef bork bork, but the picture should be enough:

https://www.vastsverige.com/sodrabohuslan/produkter/personfa...

Ah, shows how uncultured I am for not knowing that. I'm used to 30 people all crammed into one grocery aisle pushing each other for a $6 box of sugary cereal at WalMart in America so it seemed like an "insignificant" number in terms of transportation.

(slightly kidding)

Hydrofoil’s vary quite a bit but on average your looking at ~1/6th the drag at the same speeds. Wave height limits depends on the design, but it’s actually more comfortable in moderate surf than a normal boat and worst case they default to a normal boat.

As to the economics, there’s a long tail of these things. High speeds enable more trips per day which offsets fewer seats. Consider 3+ million people per year visit the Statue of Liberty and it’s a 2 way trip. I doubt NYC would swap, but if they did they could easily buy 10 of the things just for that one route.

The current NYC water taxi boats look plenty fast, at least for the short routes between NJ and NYC, or Manhattan and Brooklyn.

While going around the Statue of Liberty and sightseeing, high speed is not necessarily your goal %)

Pricing will also be determined by marginal maintenance and running costs; Foils significantly reduce running costs; going electric reduces running, environmental, maintenance costs.

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