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Comment by arcticbull | Hacker News Reader

Marine shipping is just about the most fuel efficient way of moving things between any two places, by a lot. A 100,000 dwt ship can get 1050 miles per gallon per ton of cargo. It takes about a teaspoon full of fuel to move an iPhone sized device across the pacific when I ran the numbers last.

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To ship things to/from these fabs by sea you have to add the cost of shipping by truck between Phoenix and (presumably) LA. Not sure how big of a difference that makes.

Chips are small, so one truck once a few days may suffice.

Airplanes. They use airplanes. We are talking about microchips here, possibly the highest dollar per gram substance that exists on the planet.

The interest you'd pay just losing a couple days in transit time would exceed the cost of purchasing a dedicated private jet and the crew to fly it.

Imagine the insurance...

A semi truck carries +- 15 tons of cargo and gets an average of about 6 MPG, so about 90 MPG/ton.

Trains are pretty efficient as well.

Interesting. Could you give a brief description of how you got that number? Eg. what factors were considered.

Those numbers match what comes up with a quick search:

https://www.extension.iastate.edu/grain/topics/EstimatesofTo...

That study uses 1,043.4 mpg for the fuel economy of a 100,000 dwt ship.

Videos of transportation ship engines are cool. Each cylinder is wide enough for a person to lay down inside it.

https://youtu.be/G0eMyA388bE

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