Worlds largest electric ship launched by Tasmanian boatbuilder
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
- 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.
Apples to orages.
Or to structure it a the earlier comment: for comparison, it takes me about 0.000065 MWh to cycle 1 nautical mile.
That's a couple of apples.
The other is: when will they charge? Does this ship not run at night?
Each trip consumes approximately 1,175 kWh, which is nearly the same amount a residential home consumes in a month. In each port is a tower with a robot arm that connects the charging cable automatically every time the ship comes to the dock. The system charges 10.5 kV, 600Amp and 10.5MW. The batteries have a total capacity of 4,160 kWh, which means that we always have a surplus of electricity if for some reason we cannot load during a stop or if the transit takes more time than usual.
In Helsingör the ferries charge for approx. 6 minutes and in Helsingborg the ferries charge for approx. 9 minutes. This is enough to suffice for the journey across the strait.[1]
Side note: you can also charge your car on board from the boat’s batteries.
So ”only” 42 car sized chargers for a massive boat, there are probably some massive Tesla superchargers sites that approach that.
> when will they charge?
A:
> The ship... will travel between the ports of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay. The two cities are 60 kilometers apart, a distance it is expected to travel in 90 minutes.
> Direct-current charging stations will be installed at each port... A full charge is expected to take just 40 minutes.
Big difference, since I imagine the turnaround time on a similar ICE ferry would be less than 40 minutes but more than 10.
Another point with battery powered ships is that the rate at which they discharge is speed dependent and that's a non linear relationship because the drag increases quadratic with speed. So, if you are at 30%, you can still make it across. Just not at the full speed. This is less about range anxiety than it is about just being able to stick to schedules. If the ship did not charge enough it would have to go slower. But it would still get there. This ship is designed to go quite fast which means it would have a lot of wiggle room. So they might make it across at full speed even at maybe a 60% charge. The risk is that they'd run low and might have to slow down a bit. It would get there but with a delay if that happens. And then it would have to sit there a bit longer recharging leading to more delays.
The trick is optimizing the amount of batteries to minimize turnover and delays; not around being able to charge them from 0 to 100%. The sweet spot is probably around the 20-80% mark, meaning you'd want to be able do a crossing at full speed using about 50-60% of the battery capacity. The rest is just there as safety margin to avoid delays. If you burn into that, you need to charge a bit more. With 40-50 minutes turnover, there's plenty of time to do that typically.
People who charge electric vehicles at home emphasise that you plug it in as a matter of routine every night (ABC: Always Be Charging) and since it's software-controlled, you can e.g. tell it to charge up to 80%, and figure out the most cost-effective way to do that by 8am.
The ABC of such a ship, is that it would be plugged whenever it is docked, during the turnarounds. And there is enough time in that turnaround to keep charge. It likely also has some downtime at night as well, but that matters less in this case.
It's a ship with a very low deck line that partially submerges itself, with the center of the deck underwater deep enough so the other vessel can 'float on' over the deck. They they pump the water back out, raising the deck above water and the boat on top it just rests flat.
They do this for some oil rigs as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy-lift_ship#Semi-submersib...
Indeed. As I remarked last time (1) "it's long distance and can be rough seas" They get to pick a good time of year, but either route goes past places known for storms and shipwrecks in the winter (June to September). Would you choose to go via Cape Agulhas or around Cape Horn?
It would be annoying to be ready to deliver the ship, but due to schedule over-runs, to have to wait 4 months for the weather to improve.
I assume it’s too hard to be worthwhile, and probably still wouldn’t get the range.
Skips expensive DC charging infrastructure, but does require to buy two batteries which can get expensive. Over time vpp / market arbitrage can pay for battery itself tho.
Also sacrifices some of the cargo capacity. I.e. for wellington - picton that’s about 4 rail cars or 6 semi trailers.
Edit: also smaller turnaround time.
New Zealand should we well suited to electric ferries, with a lot of good energy sources.
I can’t see the current government supporting anything EV, particularly across the Cook Strait, given the ferry fiasco to date.
New Zealand should we well suited to electrifying everything, with a lot of good energy sources.
I can’t see the current government supporting anything EV, particularly across the Cook Strait, given the ferry fiasco to date.
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-kupuj...
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.
https://www.yachtworld.com/boats-for-sale/length-25/keyword-...
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/fe...
[2] https://www.ro.com.uy/2025/10/16/nuevo-barco-china-zorrilla-...
Note that the shipbuilder from there article is based in Tasmania which is part of Australia. NZ isn't yet part of Australia.
https://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/travel-stories...
> ... 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://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-02/incat-launches-worlds...
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.
Discussion on a different article, about the same boat.
Same ship, originally specced to carry tens of thousands of liters of oil. No overall displacement number, oddly.
"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."
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.
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.
> 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-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-doe...
The same must be true of a ship.
Put the larger solar panel installations at the places where the vehicles charge.
And recall that this bridge - 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.
At least capture some of that to charge some batteries or extend the length of your voyage.
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.
The energy is free. To capture it costs a little bit of money.
My experience sailing and dealing with vessels from 30ft to 180ft give me a perspective that you probably don’t.
Providing solar panels along the roof would give the ship a few KWh of power that would otherwise be drawing from the main batteries. This would extend the range of the ship by 5-10%.
The math has been done many times for solar panels on the roof of cars, and it's not worthwhile. Ships are not the same though.
At any rate, it's inevitably far more sensible to put a larger solar panel + battery installation at a fixed place on land, and charge vehicles from that.
The ship battery is 40,000 kwh and uses at least 10,000 kwh per crossing, with 10 minutes to recharge. A handful of kwh are negligible because this isn't a sailboat.
The electricity sector in Uruguay has 98% renewable power
Full throttle you’ll be out of juice in a week. Hull speed maybe a month. Depending on wave conditions. But going, stopping, having lunch, enjoying the day, going again, enjoying tomorrow, you can be out there as long as you have provisions.
Now, should you run out of charge during your drive, you simply have to wait a while and you'll have enough to get you to a charging station. Or you can walk, taxi there. On an ocean or channel crossing, you don't have that luxury and must rely on other ships if you run out of charge. The point I'm making is that any electric vehicle should incorporate solar panels into the design to minimize it's dependence entirely on the batteries and can extend it's time doing what it's designed to do.
As solar panels advance and the wattage increases, this will be more and more important as it will open up new avenues for transportation. Like the solar LSA plane "Solar Impulse" that can fly indefinitely.
Not true. Not many at all, in fact vanishingly few. I don't know of any EV currently on sale where it is standard. Because it's not practical. See comment above.
> Now, should you run out of charge during your drive, you simply have to wait a while and you'll have enough to get you to a charging station
Or not, as it adds a few miles of range per day of charging. You're far better off using the V2L capability of another EV to bring the charge to you.
> As solar panels advance and the wattage increases, this will be more and more important
No, it won't. Even at perfect panel efficiency , there just isn't enough room on a car roof to charge a car in reasonable time. Solar panel improvements won't do it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46454978
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46455027
> Like the solar LSA plane "Solar Impulse" that can fly indefinitely.
You can already drive an EV indefinitely, by mounting a much larger surface area of solar panels on your house, and charging your car from that regularly, with or without an intermediate battery that allows you to charge the car overnight. This is proven and practical, unlike solar panels on the car. For solar panels on a car, the math is that it just never will be practical.
The math: https://youtu.be/7L1_zvqg73Q?t=590
This guy's impractical homebrew rig gets "20 to 30 miles per day" when unfolded and the car is not in motion. That unfolding is necessary as there just isn't enough surface area on a car roof to make it worthwhile.
https://www.reddit.com/r/TeslaLounge/comments/194ajsm/my_tes...
It's still far more practical to 5x or 10x the number of solar panels, mount them on a fixed structure like a house roof, where they never have to be folded or moved around, and park the car next to it, to charge.
I don’t think you’re listening. This entire argument would lead to there being an expensive solar option for Teslas. There isn’t. It’s a terrible idea because the yield is bad. Solar panels are big flat panels that point at the sun. Cars are made of curved shapes.
Solar roof on Ioniq 5 and Prius is an option, not standard. And it's rare. In fact, I've never seen it or even heard of it until I looked up what you were saying. And for the Ioniq 5 solar roof, it seems that it's not even offered at all in some countries.
The Prius one is "Offered as an option on the range-topping XSE Premium trim". Far from standard. This roof literally adds up to 4 of miles of range on a good day. (1) So it's a high-end gimmick that has niche use at best on a car, when compared to a fixed solar / battery installation situated where the car is parked.
It won't be any more useful on a boat.
1) https://www.reddit.com/r/electricvehicles/comments/13w5cb1/o...
I see many Hyundai Ioniq 5s on the roads in London UK. Exactly 0 of them have a solar roof - it's not even offered as an option here. It's a gimmick and there's no demand for it.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
According to that person, weight does indeed matter.
If you were optimising for mass rather than ease of maintenance you'd probably put them on (despite the relative lack of surface area meaning you still needed to recharge at each end)
There's also the matter of windage and what impacts that might have on the ship.
To say nothing of the capacity factor and reliability of electronics in a marine environment.
This is kinda like saying everyone should wear solar hats to offset their home electric bill.
Yes, but that's highly doubtful. It doesn't work for EVs with panels on the car's roof - you don't get significant charge from it. It's far more practical to put the panels on a larger, fixed structure where the vehicles charges daily.
Sources e.g.
https://octopusev.com/ev-hub/why-dont-electric-cars-have-sol...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/billroberson/2022/11/30/why-doe...
https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/ykwd89/w...
Edit : 50 km according to another comment