←back to thread

Exploring the Cost and Feasibility of Battery-Electric Ships

(newscenter.lbl.gov)
50 points gnabgib | 1 comments | 20 Nov 24 16:52 UTC | HN request time: 0.213s | source
Show context
nominatronic ◴[20 Nov 24 21:25 UTC] No.42198277[source]▶
> The researchers analyzed US-flagged ships less than 1,000 gross tonnage, which includes primarily passenger ships and three types of tugboats.

This is the buried lede. They are excluding basically all cargo shipping.

- Very little of the shipping industry is US-flagged. Most commercial ships sail under flags of convenience such as Panama and Libera, because of their reduced regulations and costs.

- Nobody carries cargo any distance in vessels of less than 1000 gross tons, because that scale would be uneconomical to operate. Modern seagoing cargo ships have about one crew member per 8000 tons of cargo.

replies(7): >>42198303 #>>42198478 #>>42198522 #>>42199142 #>>42199401 #>>42205771 #>>42210699 #
AcerbicZero ◴[20 Nov 24 21:55 UTC] No.42198522[source]▶
Hah, if we're only going to talk only about tiny US ships, run them on whale oil for all I care.

Seems to me the 80/20 here would be to attack the problem near the top of the stack, not the bottom. Those massive heavy fuel oil burning container ships that basically just smog the ocean 24/7 might be a good target for improvements; as well as just general code enforcement.

replies(2): >>42198596 #>>42215033 #
1. Night_Thastus ◴[22 Nov 24 16:16 UTC] No.42215033[source]▶
To be honest, the massive heavy fuel oil container ships are remarkably efficient. The amount of energy they use to move a given weight of cargo a given distance is minuscule compared to that of trucks, and still much better than even trains.

Scale has an advantage all its own when it comes to combustion engines.