"415 metric tons of goods. That means they have about five times more cargo space than an airplane, but are five times smaller in length than a typical container ship."
Not to take anything away from this (it's great), but for reference, an average vessel in Maersk's fleet can carry about 100,000 metric tons so you'd need about 250 of these to replace a single container ship.
Not sure why the article decided to compare cargo capacity of a airplane with the length of a container ship, but alas.
This might be useful for a tiny island. Ship from a large Caribbean island to a small one for example. The distance means the round trip is day (night?) trip, and there a things you want shipped in every day, but airplanes are expensive. I'm sure there are other niches where there is only a small amount of cargo going from point A to point B as well. However in general the world needs more cargo and so this doesn't make sense for most.
I actually think there's an argument to be made for this to be an alternative to typical cargo ship operations.
The challenge when moving goods via ocean vessel is that everything takes _a long_ time. Loading and unloading the vessel can take days. Transit is weeks. Unloading the vessel takes days.
You have 2 options now: air freight which is crazy expensive but gets it there in a few days max or ocean freight which is relatively cheap but might take weeks. If you can cut out vessel loading/unloading you save at least a week.
This was my exact intuition. At 450 metric ton, we're three orders of magnitude away from what large container ships can do. It's a nice PoC but this is clearly just PR from DHL.
Air freight is also an odd comparison since it's usually time-sensitive and/or pricey ($100+ per pound).
Let's see it last. It won't. This is just a short-term private endeavor/vanity-press project. Just because a business uses a "sustainable technology" does not make it a sustainable business. Comparing cargo ships to airplanes is apples vs. oranges and reveals the author's deliberate "headline" motivation and lack of technology understanding compared to the actual ground truth of shipping.
Until fuel prices change for the long-term and/or emissions regulations have an order of magnitude uptick as well as covering far more than sulfur (see IMO 2020 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARPOL_73/78#IMO_2020 ), there will be zero economic incentive to use wind-power over diesel/bunker-fuel power.
And no, any advantages of docking at smaller ports are defeated by those ports having less land-transit access and we already have fleets of (smaller) cargo vessels serving these ports at insanely low $/ton/mile rates.
Just like farms, all of the economics point to larger vessels, larger ports, and operating entity consolidation. See "The Box" by Marc Levinson https://a.co/d/0gtBkWwt or watch a few "What's Going On With Shipping" https://www.youtube.com/@wgowshipping videos.
It will take some sort of global political or environmental catastrophic externality to even budge, let alone change, the status quo.
In the big picture I am again and again fascinated by this. One of the oldest commercial services out there (post / shipping) proves repeatedly to be very innovative and strong in realization of new stuff like this. They were the first or one of the first, who deployed electrical cargo vans.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetscooter
To be accurate, they bought the startup. But still: they didn't wait for the automotive company to come up with a e cargo van.
We already have sailing sports where people race all kinds of wind-powered vessels, and they push the envelope of tech development, just like F1 and the car industry.
Also rich people love this sort of thing. Give them something to do with all that money that has some sort of chance of improving things.
At the risk of sounding overly negative, these things are pretty much always vanity projects. Someone wanted a really cool boat and managed to get some investors onboard. It’s more about an aesthetic than a business case.
We’re talking here about a fairly large crew that will transport a small amount of cargo while taking a really long time. On top of that, these aren’t container ship so loading/unloading will take a long time. There is no economic case here.
The only way you can make this somewhat work is by selling the aesthetic/story. E.g.: this coffee was shipped by sailboat. But even then, notice how every company linked in the article of another commenter aren’t actually operating anymore…
20 years ago I read this magazine article about putting kites on container ships for efficiency. This gadget seems to have durable appeal to entrepreneurs and/or suckers.
"415 metric tons of goods. That means they have about five times more cargo space than an airplane, but are five times smaller in length than a typical container ship."
Not to take anything away from this (it's great), but for reference, an average vessel in Maersk's fleet can carry about 100,000 metric tons so you'd need about 250 of these to replace a single container ship.
Not sure why the article decided to compare cargo capacity of a airplane with the length of a container ship, but alas.
This might be useful for a tiny island. Ship from a large Caribbean island to a small one for example. The distance means the round trip is day (night?) trip, and there a things you want shipped in every day, but airplanes are expensive. I'm sure there are other niches where there is only a small amount of cargo going from point A to point B as well. However in general the world needs more cargo and so this doesn't make sense for most.
Island hopping is a niche where electric flight might get started.
Hawaii is looking at running some next year.
https://www.sfgate.com/hawaii/article/hawaii-electric-airpla...
I actually think there's an argument to be made for this to be an alternative to typical cargo ship operations.
The challenge when moving goods via ocean vessel is that everything takes _a long_ time. Loading and unloading the vessel can take days. Transit is weeks. Unloading the vessel takes days.
You have 2 options now: air freight which is crazy expensive but gets it there in a few days max or ocean freight which is relatively cheap but might take weeks. If you can cut out vessel loading/unloading you save at least a week.
Maybe they might not be restricted to Long Beach or Port Newark.
This was my exact intuition. At 450 metric ton, we're three orders of magnitude away from what large container ships can do. It's a nice PoC but this is clearly just PR from DHL.
Air freight is also an odd comparison since it's usually time-sensitive and/or pricey ($100+ per pound).
Let's see it last. It won't. This is just a short-term private endeavor/vanity-press project. Just because a business uses a "sustainable technology" does not make it a sustainable business. Comparing cargo ships to airplanes is apples vs. oranges and reveals the author's deliberate "headline" motivation and lack of technology understanding compared to the actual ground truth of shipping.
Until fuel prices change for the long-term and/or emissions regulations have an order of magnitude uptick as well as covering far more than sulfur (see IMO 2020 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARPOL_73/78#IMO_2020 ), there will be zero economic incentive to use wind-power over diesel/bunker-fuel power.
And no, any advantages of docking at smaller ports are defeated by those ports having less land-transit access and we already have fleets of (smaller) cargo vessels serving these ports at insanely low $/ton/mile rates.
Just like farms, all of the economics point to larger vessels, larger ports, and operating entity consolidation. See "The Box" by Marc Levinson https://a.co/d/0gtBkWwt or watch a few "What's Going On With Shipping" https://www.youtube.com/@wgowshipping videos.
It will take some sort of global political or environmental catastrophic externality to even budge, let alone change, the status quo.
In the big picture I am again and again fascinated by this. One of the oldest commercial services out there (post / shipping) proves repeatedly to be very innovative and strong in realization of new stuff like this. They were the first or one of the first, who deployed electrical cargo vans. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetscooter
To be accurate, they bought the startup. But still: they didn't wait for the automotive company to come up with a e cargo van.
> "The wind-powered boats could be especially appealing when oil prices have shot up because of the Iran war."
Check of oil prices same day article was published:
WTI $73.51/bbl BRENT $77.57/bbl MURBAN: $70.46/bbl
I love this idea, but do these ships exist yet? I can only find renderings, and the company's "roadmap" page is not a roadmap (https://vela-transport.com/feuille-de-route/).
The only real footage I can find is a construction video from a year ago: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DL9CSLdtkaP/
The ships aren't new, but a large transport operator like DHL buying into the concept is.
Well, unless you count pre-motor cargo ships of course, those were the only option for centuries.
Someone should make a sport out of this.
We already have sailing sports where people race all kinds of wind-powered vessels, and they push the envelope of tech development, just like F1 and the car industry.
Also rich people love this sort of thing. Give them something to do with all that money that has some sort of chance of improving things.
Look no further! SailGP is pretty much the maritime version of F1
For anyone interested in economics and life cycle math (for sailing in general, not the trimarans they are using here) I recommend https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2021/05/how-to-design-a-sa...
At the risk of sounding overly negative, these things are pretty much always vanity projects. Someone wanted a really cool boat and managed to get some investors onboard. It’s more about an aesthetic than a business case.
We’re talking here about a fairly large crew that will transport a small amount of cargo while taking a really long time. On top of that, these aren’t container ship so loading/unloading will take a long time. There is no economic case here.
The only way you can make this somewhat work is by selling the aesthetic/story. E.g.: this coffee was shipped by sailboat. But even then, notice how every company linked in the article of another commenter aren’t actually operating anymore…
This is like the 1984 calendar ripping meme except the year is 1600.
20 years ago I read this magazine article about putting kites on container ships for efficiency. This gadget seems to have durable appeal to entrepreneurs and/or suckers.
https://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2005/09/17/sa...
The company recently went bankrupt, by the way. It turns out that gigantic container ships are already incredibly efficient.