China Launches World's Largest Electric Container Ship (techtimes.com) 94
AmiMoJo shares a report from Tech Times: China has reached a major landmark in green transportation with the launch of the world's largest fully electric container ship. Developed and manufactured by China Ocean Shipping Group (Cosco), the vessel is now operating a regular service route between Shanghai and Nanjing, aiming to reduce emissions significantly along its journey. The Greenwater 01, an all-electric container ship, is positioning itself to be a shipping industry pioneer. Equipped with a main battery exceeding 50,000 kilowatt-hours, the vessel can accommodate additional battery boxes for longer voyages. These battery boxes, each containing 1,600 kilowatt-hours of electricity and similar in size to standard 20-foot containers, provide flexibility in extending the ship's travel range. With 24 battery boxes onboard, the Greenwater 01 can complete a journey consuming 80,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity. This is equivalent to saving 15 tons of fuel compared to a standard container ship, highlighting the efficiency of electric propulsion systems. According to Cosco, the vessel can reduce CO2 emissions by 2,918 tons per year, which is equivalent to taking 2,035 family cars off the road or planting 160,000 trees.
Offset? (Score:3, Interesting)
Does this take into account the co2 produced during manufacturing of the batteries and or the energy used to charge them?
Re:Offset? (Score:5, Informative)
LFP batteries are around 55 kgCO2eq/kWh for manufacturing, so 2750 tonnes for the 50MWh battery pack. Or less than a year of emissions by an equivalent fossil fuel boat.
For charging them, China has more wind power installed than the rest of the world combined, and more solar power installed than the rest of the world combined. In 2023 they also installed more wind and solar power than the rest of the world combined, by quite some margin. As I'm sure Windborn would like to point out, they have nuclear too.
This is a big deal for more than just the reduced emissions though. The technology will be exported and is an important one for cleaning up global shipping, which is responsible for around 3% of global GHG emissions.
Re: Offset? (Score:4, Informative)
China us building coal power plants, but it is burning less coal. They have been running the plants less and less. Unlike America/ Europe where coal plants try to run 100% of the time, in China the amount of time they are running the coal plants has been cratering and is under 50% now. was not found on this server.
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>> where coal plants try to run 100% of the time
They might try that but in actual practice they run far less than 100%.
https://www.eia.gov/todayinene... [eia.gov]
"During the winter and summer months, the coal fleet operates at an average capacity factor, or utilization rate, of more than 60%. However, in the spring and fall, the average capacity factor has been less than 50%."
From what I understand, the utilization rate in China is about the same.
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There's a fight going on between coal mining companies and wind energy companies in China at the moment. The coal miners are pushing for as much coal use as possible, but their product is expensive compared to wind power, and the pollution is a big issue even before you get to the central government's climate goals.
Then you have solar. The shear speed at which it is being deployed is incredible, and of course it all eats into demand for coal and gas. That's why they are 5 years ahead of their Paris goals, a
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For charging them, China has more wind power installed than the rest of the world combined, and more solar power installed than the rest of the world combined. In 2023 they also installed more wind and solar power than the rest of the world combined, by quite some margin.
Guessing that if anywhere else on the planet suffered from a supply shortage issue with regards to obtaining solar panels or wind farm hardware, it was because China decided to keep it for themselves.
Re:Offset? (Score:5, Informative)
China uses more coal than the rest of the world combined.
China gets a lower percentage of it's electricity from low carbon sources than the US does.
China is one of the highest per capita users of coal: higher than the US, UK, Japan, S Korea, Russia, India, and more than a hundred others
I think this is a great development, but it ain't green.
Re:Offset? (Score:4, Insightful)
Even if it's all coal I bet it's still going to have lower lifetime emissions than running on bunker fuel.
Re:Offset? (Score:4, Interesting)
Even if it's all coal I bet it's still going to have lower lifetime emissions than running on bunker fuel.
Are you sure about that?
Oil and coal have roughly the same efficiency for power generation, but coal produces more CO2 per ton than oil. That suggests you could put a generator on the ship to charge the batteries (burning bunker fuel) and have "lower lifetime emissions" than charging the ship from a coal power plant. Of course, instead of generating electric power with that bunker fuel, you could use it to turn the propeller shafts directly at even higher efficiency, so...
I haven't done the math, but unless the assumptions above are incorrect I would say you'd lose that bet.
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So, first: explanation of why coal produces more CO2 when burned than oil or gas. [mit.edu] The short version is, "because coal has more carbon in it."
Next, comparison of efficiency of different types of fossil power. [guidehouse.com] The charts you want are on pages 13 and 15. The data is pretty noisy because it's by country generating, but coal and oil are roughly the same efficiency if you remove the outlier datapoints.
The rest of my post is inferences drawn from those two metrics. You're welcome to dispute those inferences in
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Given that you're talking about cars in a conversation about ships, you may want to rethink tossing around words like gibberish. Crawl back under your bridge, troll.
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An ICE running on gasoline has approximately 30% efficiency. Diesel can reach up to 45%. An electric engine will run at about 75% at least, so there is that.
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You forgot to multiply that 75% by the efficiency of the generator...
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It clearly depends where the electricity is coming from. And if you go down that path, you should count the energy taken to extract and refine the gasoline into account as well. That won't fare well for ICEs.
Re:Offset? (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is why projects like this are so important. Massive batteries that can be charged from renewable energy when it is available (it will likely be in port overnight when demand is low), and which also help reduce the cost of grid storage and increase demand for renewable energy.
Additionally, China is 5 years ahead of its agreed Paris climate goal. Arguably that means that the goal was not ambitious enough, but considering all the predictions made on Slashdot about it being completely ignored due to lack of enforcement, it's a positive sign that they both take the issue seriously and can be expected to make a serious effort to meet what we all agree to.
What do you want China to do here? Clearly cutting off coal immediately is not going to be acceptable to them, any more than it would be acceptable if your country did it.
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Which is why projects like this are so important. Massive batteries that can be charged from renewable energy when it is available (it will likely be in port overnight when demand is low), and which also help reduce the cost of grid storage and increase demand for renewable energy.
I wonder if there would be a sideline for this ship as an "energy tanker," taking charged batteries from areas with cheap power to areas with expensive power, or offloading these battery containers to islands, mine sites or other areas not connected to the grid?
You can probably see that I have no idea of the extent of the electricity grid in China or its offshore areas. But if there are places nearby that currently run diesel generators 24/7, dropping off a few shipping containers full of charged-up batteri
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We are likely to see energy being delivered in these standard container sized crates now. Hospitals that need backup power, stricken nuclear plants, mobile military facilities, disaster areas...
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American oil is more than 6t each [ourworldindata.org] Chinese coal is less tha 6t each [ourworldindata.org]
American CO2 is the good CO2 though right? Because it didn't come from coal?
Re:Offset? (Score:5, Insightful)
Does this take into account the co2 produced during manufacturing of the batteries and or the energy used to charge them?
Now ask those same questions for gas/diesel vehicles. How much CO2 is produced simply drilling for the oil? How much to transport it? How much to refine it? How much to deliver the gas to stations? And finally, how much once it's burned?
There is no such thing as a free ride. The best you can do is reduce.
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Does this take into account the co2 produced during manufacturing of the batteries and or the energy used to charge them?
Now ask those same questions for gas/diesel vehicles. How much CO2 is produced simply drilling for the oil? How much to transport it? How much to refine it? How much to deliver the gas to stations? And finally, how much once it's burned?
There is no such thing as a free ride. The best you can do is reduce.
If you REALLY want to compare costs between ICE and EV solutions, fine. Remove ALL government subsidies, tax breaks, kickbacks, and deductions both solutions are getting right now, and just tell me what it costs a consumer.
That will tends to say a lot about the overall cost of the new compared to the old. It says a lot when you simply cannot make or sell an EV without government assistance in some way. Or losing your ass on every car.
Re:Offset? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Offset? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you REALLY want to compare costs between ICE and EV solutions, fine. Remove ALL government subsidies, tax breaks, kickbacks, and deductions both solutions are getting right now, and just tell me what it costs a consumer.
Yeah but if you do that ICE cars will become unaffordable.
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If you REALLY want to compare costs between ICE and EV solutions, fine. Remove ALL government subsidies, tax breaks, kickbacks, and deductions both solutions are getting right now, and just tell me what it costs a consumer.
Yeah but if you do that ICE cars will become unaffordable.
Affordability is relative if the end result is a tax burden and/or government footprint being reduced significantly. What people cannot afford, is to assume subsidies themselves are not full of corrupt cost.
And for the majority, all new cars are essentially priced at unaffordable regardless of type. The status quo, isn’t really working well anymore. Especially when debt costs have skyrocketed due to interest.
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Affordability is relative if the end result is a tax burden
No it's not. We're not asking if governments can afford something. What a society's tax burden is and what my personal bank account says are two completely unrelated concepts.
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If you REALLY want to compare costs between ICE and EV solutions, fine. Remove ALL government subsidies, tax breaks, kickbacks, and deductions both solutions are getting right now, and just tell me what it costs a consumer.
The fossil fuel industry is the most subsidized thing in history. Let's do this! Though if we did it all at once, civilization would probably collapse.
That will tends to say a lot about the overall cost of the new compared to the old.
EVs are the old. At first there were far more EVs than ICEVs because of the lack of availability of fuel. Anyone could assemble a state of the art battery back then, and it was much easier to generate electricity than to refine gasoline. That part is still true!
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You missed 'invasions' off your list of actions taken to subsidise the price of one of those options.
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Does this take into account the co2 produced during manufacturing of the batteries and or the energy used to charge them?
Now ask those same questions for gas/diesel vehicles. How much CO2 is produced simply drilling for the oil? How much to transport it? How much to refine it? How much to deliver the gas to stations? And finally, how much once it's burned?
There is no such thing as a free ride. The best you can do is reduce.
If you REALLY want to compare costs between ICE and EV solutions, fine. Remove ALL government subsidies, tax breaks, kickbacks, and deductions both solutions are getting right now, and just tell me what it costs a consumer.
That will tends to say a lot about the overall cost of the new compared to the old. It says a lot when you simply cannot make or sell an EV without government assistance in some way. Or losing your ass on every car.
Fair points - but I suspect that ICE auto makers also couldn't "make or sell" a car without the tax breaks they get. At least not without making their shareholders unhappy with their returns, which could be a death spiral.
Also, both EVs and ICEs depend on government-funded roads. That amount probably overshadows "tax breaks, kickbacks, and deductions" by a margin wide enough to render the difference between EVs and ICEs moot. Plus, as EVs and the processes to manufacture and recycle them mature, the differe
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We need to apply a price to the pollution externality (Pigouvian tax), and THEN remove all regulations and let the consumer choose what's the least expensive. Increase the tax until actual carbon emissions start going down, while the market continuously adapts in the most efficient way.
To correct for limits of the jurisdiction, simply apply the carbon tax at the border based...best estimate plus a li
Re:Offset? (Score:5, Informative)
They probably are not including the manufacturing or charging, but it is still going to be a lot better than a regular ship.
Electric vehicles end up being much better than fossil fuel vehicles even counting the total lifecycle costs and electricity generation .
Even without recycling shorter lasting and environmentally worse NMC batteries and charging them from a coal plant, ends up being better for the environment and releasing less CO2. A big study done like a decade ago on cars found the average break even point would be about 80,000 miles for a single use NMC battery charged with a coal power plant. It was under 20,000 miles for the average US grid generation, which coal is a relatively small portion of.
With LFP batteries which last a lot longer and are less environmentally damaging to make, it is even better. Especially combined with recycling, and there are already recycle a fair amount of batteries, and they are building a lot of new factories for recycling even more. The breakeven point comes even sooner.
Oil/gas/coal has an insane amount of emissions and environmental damage, not just from burning it, but also from getting it, refining it, transporting it, and dealing with all the byproducts. Getting/Refining/Transporting gasoline uses a fair amount of electricity and a very large amount of heat/pressure usually from burning natural gas, the electricity to make the gasoline for the average car has been found to be between like 1/6 and 1/2 the electricity needed to drive a similar BEV the same distance. If the natural gas used in the process was instead put through a CSP plant, and used to charge a BEV, it would go farther than using that to help refine the gasoline.
The average large coal power plant has less CO2 emissions for unit of energy produced than a gas/diesel car engine. You need to make a very large amount of compromises to the efficiency of a heat engine to put it in a car, because it needs to startup/shutdown very quickly, be able to not only change speed/torque very quickly but over a relatively large range, they don't run very long, they need to fit in a car, the speed/torque output needs to in the range for the transmission, and a bunch of other things. A large baseload power plant like coal, nuclear, CSP NG plants can take hours to startup/shutdown and once they are running they maintain the exact same speed/torque output 24/7.
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Actual range? (Score:4, Insightful)
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It is a bit strange, TFA says, "between Shanghai and Nanjing", which are "coastal cities".
It is either the Nanjing in Jiangsu, which is "coastal" in the sense that it is on the river, which means the distance is about 350-ish km and then only up and down a river, or another Nanjing that noone's heard about, in which case all bets are off. It could be in Africa :)
Re:Actual range? (Score:4, Informative)
> It is a bit strange, TFA says, "between Shanghai and Nanjing", which are "coastal cities".
I'd be really impressed if a container ship of any size made regular voyages to land-locked cities. :)
Digging a little deeper;
"Captain Wang Jun told CCTV that with 24 battery boxes, the vessel can complete a trip that consumes 80,000kWh of electricity. A standard container ship would use 15 tonnes of fuel for a similar journey.
The electric vessel is around 120 metres (394 feet) long and 24 metres wide - about the size of 10 basketball courts. Its maximum speed is around 19km/h (12mph)."
That is a very small ship, at most 1000 TEU. (For comparison, the largest container ships in service today are just over 24,000 TEU). Let's put an upper bound on that and call it a Handy class vessel which, based on some searching, will burn about 35 metric tons of fuel per day running 24 hours cruising at 20 knots... about 37km/hr. 888km per 35 tons. So at 15 tons of fuel that's a distance traveled of about 380km.
But the ship's top speed is only 19km/hr so there's a modest increase in efficiency by cruising slower, so let's call it 400km.
Interestingly enough it's about 400km from Shanghai to Nanjing, following the river...
=Smidge=
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I always thought Nanjing is pretty much land-locked, been there several times and never saw a sea :)
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Re:Actual range? (Score:4, Informative)
Soanybody seen an article that says how FAR it can travel, and not merely “a journey consuming 80,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity?”
The article itself says the trip is between Shanghai and Nanjing. According to this calculator [sea-distances.org], that distance is 195 nautical miles.
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That's with the 50MWh battery. For the 80MWh one it would be about 270 nautical miles.
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haven't you studied relativity?
that extra juice lets the ship move so fast that the 270 miles appears to be just 195 to outside observers!
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Port to port transits emit the most diesel cause of respiratory disease
That’s what you want if solving for pollution impacts
IF just racing a ship can stack battery units until circumnavigation
They are a P’nP technology
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I presume there are also a lot more of these smaller ships travelling these shorter routes than there are larger ships on longer routes, so if this can be scaled, it makes a big dent, just like last mile and medium duty trucking electrification can make a big dent even without touching heavy duty / long-haul.
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Yes, the reduction in the equivalent of tailpipe emissions is clearly going to be much more impactful for human health with this kind of vessel than with very large cotnainer ships.
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Soanybody seen an article that says how FAR it can travel, and not merely “a journey consuming 80,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity?”
It's not that big, 700 TEU, equivalent to 1400 40ft trailers, vs 5000 - 20000 TEUs for container ships. It appears to bee coastal freighter given TFA said it plys between Shanghai and Nanjing.
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The article has a bunch of numbers: "saving 3,900 kg (8,600 lb) of fuel for every 100 nautical miles sailed" and "80,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity. This is equivalent to saving 15 tonnes of fuel". So 3.9 tonnes of fuel per 100 nautical miles and 15 tonnes are equivalent to 80 MWh. 100*15/3.9 = 384 nautical miles. That's 712 km in adult units.
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This ship can carry 700 TEU, which is a "Twenty-Foot Equivalent Unit", or 1 is the equivalent of a 20' container. For comparison, international shipping is driven by terms like Suez-Max or Panamax, which are the largest ships that can fit through those canals. Panamax used to be 5,000 TEU but the recent expansion of the canal has made it possible for ships that are 12,000 TEU; Suezmax is considerably more so. The largest container ship in the world holds 18,000 TEU. So this ship is tiny by comparison to modern shipping.
MSC Irina Class: 24,346 TEU. The Irina Class is currently the largest class of container ships in the world. [ship-technology.com]
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So despite nitpicking an irrelevant detail, you actually only further prove my point about the economics of this. This is a coastal trade system; it competes with rail and trucking, and has economics issues that may or may not be significant.
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Just showing anyone else reading that they're even bigger now.
Come again? (Score:1)
I was hoping that we would be using accepted standards of measurement such as how.many dootball fields are we talking about, otherwise.we switch to an unofficial unit e.g. the size of Texas. But then the natives might start acting like a superpower; at least we can still understand the language
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Actually they play Sarcastaball [youtube.com]
Maybe combine this with sails? (Score:3)
Electric is one thing, but I do wonder if sails might be able to help things even further. They might not be able to drive the ship like the wooden vessels of yore, but it might help lower the electric load on the main motors.
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I was wondering the same thing.
https://newsforkids.net/articl... [newsforkids.net]
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This particular vessel is doing a route between Shanghai and Nanjing - going up and down a river. It's roughly the equivalent of New Orleans to Vicksburg. There's bound to be some wind, but it's going to be much harder to harvest than the trade winds out in the middle of the ocean.
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Sails do help and there have been various experiments since I don't know how long ago done with Fletcher rotors, wing sails, kites, all proving they can cut fuel usage.
But clearly none has become popular for some reason, most likely financial.
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I never really understand these finances. Surely wind solutions are like 95% or 99% capex, and then they just cut opex from then on out? So the payback period may be a couple of years, but once it’s reached, it’s all good from then on? My best guess is that the commercial incentives are split, ie that whoever pays the bill for the fuel is not the same as whoever pays the bill for the capex, so the latter doesn’t bother as they don’t get the benefit. But I know nothing of this industr
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Your guess is likely true, since ship registration, owner, crew, captain, officers, etcetera may come from different countries and companies.
That would also explain why a food corporation is footing the bill for this possible limited installation.
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There are trials of vertical turbines on ships at the moment, the advantage being that they are very simple to operate and don't need to be adjusted for wind direction. There have also been tests with kites that can catch wind at higher altitudes.
Lacking in details (Score:3)
for instance, the article does not mention how large it is. Not even its container capacity.
Cosco has commissioned 3 battery-powered ships. N997 and N998 are 119.8m long * 23.6m wide, they a maximum speed of 19.4 km/h and a capacity of 700 TEU. Installed power is 1800 kW from two motors. They are intended for the Yangtze river.
One 20-ft container contains 1600 kWh of battery capacity.
The Greenwater 01 looks similar to these, and may be identical.
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How much of the ship's cargo capacity do the batteries take up? If it takes two electric trips to replace one diesel trip the economics won't look nearly so good.
As a test platform it's still interesting.
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About 25 out of 700 TEU is taken up by batteries. So slightly under 5%.
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You may want to read it again. It does not actually say how large the Greenwater 01 is. Here's the relevant quote:
In addition to the Greenwater 01, Cosco launched two 700TEU electric container ships, N997 and N998-these vessels are equipped with advanced battery-powered propulsion systems.
limited good news (Score:4, Informative)
Let's be clear, a 700teu vessel is not what most people would think of when they think container ship, it's more like a local parcel truck or delivery van. (Typical ocean container ships today are 12000-25000 teus - 2 teus is roughly a semi truck trailer of cargo.)
It's good news experimentally, certainly, and was likely to first be launched in Asia where waterborne local cargo is a thing. But 5% of the cargo capacity dedicated to battery packs - and likely needing to be changed out roughly every couple of days - doesn't scale much yet.
https://www.offshore-energy.bi... [offshore-energy.biz]
CO2 blah pollutants YAY (Score:2, Insightful)
The CO2 narrative lost all its air with Scientists revealing human activity only 4% globally
Pollutants from ships are #1 period.
Tell the world how ES solves that problem
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The CO2 narrative lost all its air with Scientists revealing human activity only 4% globally
Pollutants from ships are #1 period.
Shipping is human activity. You think container ships are from mars or what?
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It only takes 4% to knock you over after you miss your punch and your center of gravity is off. Look up the word "threshold" then try reading about the concept of addition... and you may want to try saving your money over time... just as good practice if you still don't understand accumulation.
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Do not vote, it's a joke! a complete waste of time putting your drop into an ocean of sheep.... your vote is not even 0.0000001%
World's biggest (Score:2)
World's biggest battery fire coming in 3 ... 2 ...
But it gets better because (Score:2)
Looking forward to the first un-ignorable shipping EV battery incident. It will no doubt be legendary.
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"It will no doubt be legendary." - and unfortunately probably happen when in port during charging putting many lives at risk.
Battery eco waste? (Score:1)
Re:Battery eco waste? (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Batteries don’t “go bad”. They’re not fresh chicken meat. They simply lose range over time. After 15 years, they’re down to about 80% of original range. If that’s no longer enough for the original use, they can then be used in less demanding applications. When that secondary use is no longer viable, the battery material can be recycled. At the point it’s recycled, it can be made into much more efficient batteries, because battery tech will have advanced by a couple of decades.
2. There’s loads of well-to-wheel studies for EVs. This ship is not going to be materially different. Charging them gets lower carbon-intensity over time, as grid mix improves. Most well-to-wheel studies don’t account for that, yet it’s a huge advantage of batteries.
3. The mass is going to be largely irrelevant. The whole benefit of a ship is that the mass is supported by the water. Yes, you need to overcome inertia, but the mass is not a big deal. That’s why a puny human can use their feet to push a boat away from a harbour wall, even though the boat weighs several tons.
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1) cars have a weight problem. Shipping is relatively negligible which is why it's the cheapest way to send massive amounts of heavy things and rivers are still a big factor in economies. Battery tech not practical for cars can be used in boats... especially massive boats that just keep getting bigger to save money... they can afford to get a little bigger or give up a little space like the older smaller ships already do. Don't be fooled thinking they can't stay in business if government forces them to forf
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Did you mean to reply to me or the PP?
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does it matter?
Separates energy generation from use (Score:2)
Which they will use to... (Score:2)
Its a riverboat container ship (Score:2)