[HN Gopher] CATL Expects Oceanic Electric Ships in 3 Years
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CATL Expects Oceanic Electric Ships in 3 Years
Author : thelastgallon
Score : 28 points
Date : 2025-12-06 20:00 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (cleantechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (cleantechnica.com)
| eimrine wrote:
| Is it possible for ocean vessel to generate from sun panels as
| much as needed for moving? I would suggest vessels does not need
| scarce Lithium, it is too needed for some other uses.
| themanmaran wrote:
| Unfortunately, it's not even close. Maybe 1-2% in a highly
| optimistic scenario.
|
| - 20k square meters of hull space
|
| - If fully covered with solar panels, on a sunny day, you could
| expect 1-2 MWh (when averaging in night time)
|
| - Current diesel engines typically output 60MWh continuously
| while underway.
|
| And that's not factoring in the solar panels getting covered in
| salt over time and losing efficiency. Plus preventing the ship
| from actually loading / unloading cargo efficiently.
|
| It's not just a matter of panel efficiency either. If we had
| magic panels that could absorb 100% of the suns power over the
| 20k sqm deck, it would only equate to about four times as much
| (8% of the overall power need).
| tshaddox wrote:
| Did you mean MW rather than MWh?
| probablypower wrote:
| 60 MWh continuously means inf MW.
| SigmundA wrote:
| 60 MWh continuous is nonsense because its a unit of
| energy, 60 MWh per hour is just 60 megawatts, 60 MWh per
| second however is 216 gigawatts.
| SigmundA wrote:
| Your math seem to work out, but I don't like the incoherent
| use if energy units.
|
| 60 MWh per what? Per hour? thats just 60 MW continuous POWER
| or 1440 MWh ENERGY per day.
| rgmerk wrote:
| No.
|
| I'm too lazy to do it myself but 5 minutes of searching and
| calculating will show you that the area of solar panels
| required to move a ship is far, far, larger than the area of
| that ship.
|
| Not to mention that a container ship's deck is typically
| completely covered with, well, containers.
|
| Also, lithium isn't scarce.
| Onavo wrote:
| No, but with wind it's possible. Either vertical windmills or
| sails with modern signal processing.
|
| Honestly DJI and Boeing should get into this business. A boat's
| sail basically a plane's wing, aerodynamically speaking. They
| share a lot of similarities with endurance gliders.
| bluGill wrote:
| Plenty of engineers exist in sailing who know all that and
| have studied this. Boeing brings nothing new if they get in.
| Well other than perhaps dollars, but that isn't the problem
| for the most part.
| throw-qqqqq wrote:
| Smaller boats sure, but ocean going cargo vessels? There are
| some serious challenges!
|
| Try to approximate the area needed to generate e.g. 50MW
| propulsion. It would be measured in hectares.
| epistasis wrote:
| Lithium is not scarce, and not a limiting factor for scaling up
| batteries.
|
| There's more than enough lithium out there, more discovered
| every month, and the perception that we are limited by lithium
| is mostly out there because certain media sources are trying to
| help out there fossil fuel friends by delaying the energy
| interchange by a few years.
|
| Whether battery ocean shipping containers make technical sense
| is a different question, but I wouldn't worry about lithium
| use!
| jiggawatts wrote:
| All resources are "scarce" at very low price points, below
| which most nations are unable or unwilling to extract them.
|
| Lithium, rare earth metals, and a bunch of others are only
| "scarce" because right now China is the only country willing
| to put up with the pollution levels that the cheap, dirty
| version of their extraction produces.
|
| Everything can be produced cleanly, safely, etc... but that
| comes at a price.
|
| It's like when employers complain that "nobody wants to
| work". That needs to be translated to "nobody wants to work
| for the low wages I'm willing to pay".
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| There are examples of solar electric catamarans - but they are
| much smaller than a cargo vessel. It's not nothing, but we're
| some ways away.
|
| I wouldn't underestimate what creative and dedicated engineers
| can accomplish.
| zeristor wrote:
| Cars have regenerative breaking which is a help in urban areas.
|
| Ships tend to go not change course nearly as much on a several
| day journey. I guess a propellor could run in reverse for
| regenerative breaking, but it wouldn't help much.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Wind, large surface area for solar
|
| Also wave based generators that could also act as
| dampers/suspension and they wouldn't steal energy from forward
| motion like wind would (depending on if you're generating wind
| energy or using wind to buttress the batteries).
|
| Ideally a combination of sails coupled with batteries and wave
| generators sounds like it would be very energy efficient.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Solar on board of cargo vessels is a pipe dream, as is 'wave
| based generation'.
| tmountain wrote:
| Isn't regenerative braking reclaiming otherwise wasted energy
| from necessary deceleration? Running the propeller in reverse
| would result in having to apply equal or greater energy to
| regain the current speed, so it's a net loss of energy if I'm
| understanding the suggestion properly.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Ships are subject to so much drag that this is rarely a
| problem, only in emergency situations and there is not much
| that you can do to stop a vessel that weighs 100,000 tons or
| more except to run your engines in reverse and start praying to
| your deity. Regenerative braking for boats would be a complete
| waste.
|
| There are some vessels that have single use emergency brakes,
| but the latest trend is to have motor 'pods' that are
| electrical and that can be used both for normal propulsion as
| well as to perform emergency stops that are quite impressive
| given the size of the vessels they are on. Typically an
| oceangoing vessel requires at least 3, but commonly 5 to 10
| ship lengths to come to a full stop from moving forward under
| power. This is not necessarily because of limitations of the
| propulsion unit, but simply because stopping that much tonnage
| too fast would do as much damage as a collision would. With
| classical engines there is far more rotating mass so it would
| take much longer than with electrical propulsion to react
| before the beginning of the braking phase.
| NewJazz wrote:
| _Regenerative braking for boats would be a complete waste._
|
| Unless you have a large sail to generate thrust to spin the
| propeller...
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| Pods are used primarily for manoverability. This allows
| Cruise ships to get in and out of ports with a minimum of
| assistance (none at all, if conditions permit). This is
| important because they are entering and leaving ports every
| day or two. It also makes sense as the hotel loads on these
| floating skyscrapers is similar to the propulsion loads so
| having combined main engines and generators gives other
| advantages.
|
| Ocean going container vessels on the other hand use massive
| direct drive two stroke diesel engines (usually they only
| have a single engine). They have no gearbox. The only way to
| go-astern is to literally start the engine in reverse. This
| can only be done up to a limited speed, otherwise the
| windmilling effect of the water passing through the prop
| would overpower the starting air.
|
| Suffice to say, I'd put a long bet on the overwhelming
| majority of containerships being powered by internal
| combustion engines in 30 years time. If we get our act
| together we might have come up with an alternative /
| synthetic fuel by then but I wouldn't hold my breath.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Not changing course is good though. Regenerative braking is
| only good because it increases the efficiency when you
| absolutely must slow down, but it would always be more
| efficient to slow down less.
| 56J8XhH7voFRwPR wrote:
| I guess I want to know "oceanic" means in this instance. Is that
| just going out into the ocean a short distance? They mention the
| "Yangtze River Three Gorges 1" river cruise ship as an example.
| This thing has a range of like 100km. It seems we are far away
| from making true oceanic crossings of any long distance and I
| doubt that is coming by 2028.
| Animats wrote:
| East Asia has extensive coastal medium-distance trade. There
| are so many islands and island nations. That's oceanic trade,
| but not transatlantic or trans-pacific long hauls.
| mcculley wrote:
| I am very skeptical. Battery tech is still far away from the
| energy density of diesel fuel. How far could an electric ship go
| and what could it carry?
| jacquesm wrote:
| There are multiple electric ferries already in operation:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Ampere
|
| They are quite impressive but they are still very far away from
| your average ocean going cargo vessel.
| toast0 wrote:
| Electrifying ferries is great, but this particular one has a
| run time of 20 minutes (and a charge time of 10 minutes). I
| get a totally different vibe from 'oceanic ship' than a 20
| minute ferry ride.
|
| Near me, we now have a hybrid ferry, no charging
| infrastructure, but it still uses much less fuel than before
| it was refit, so that's cool too. It's bigger than the one
| you linked and sails on a longer route: 2,499 passengers, 202
| vehicles, typically serves an 8.6 mile route.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Wenatchee
| hn12 wrote:
| ... and energy densities of batteries will _stay_ well below
| that of tanks of hydrocarbons, as
| https://web.archive.org/web/20130204210054/http://h30565.www...
| explains.
| scythe wrote:
| Depends on the current fuel-to-payload ratio of the diesel
| ships. If it's 3% and batteries would push it to 10%, it's not
| a huge problem. But if it's 15% and batteries would push it to
| 50% you're losing a lot of capacity.
| jmward01 wrote:
| I did some fast back of the napkin math on the idea of sahara
| solar + electrified shipping + sodium ion batteries. A lot
| depends on the, as yet, fully disclosed pricing of sodium ion
| batteries but the trend in pricing, and capacity, is clear and
| the price point may have already happened to make this viable.
| One thing is clear though, even if my napkin math was massively
| optimistic and it isn't economically feasible now it will be
| shortly and at that point energy production around the world is
| potentially disrupted. Ships can pull in and feed the grid
| directly or offload containers and onload empty ones to make the
| trip back for cheap, clean, renewable power. It is looking more
| and more viable to ship electrons like we do for oil and that is
| a major game-changer.
| idontwantthis wrote:
| That's both amazing and hilarious just like filling a plane
| with hard drives is both insanely effective and just plain
| insane.
| jauco wrote:
| We already have electric oceanic ships. They're called nuclear
| submarines.
|
| Allseas is putting the reactors on their vessels as well iirc.
| rgmerk wrote:
| OK, I did some calculations based on:
|
| * a 5,000 km electric range. * 40MW continuous power requirement
| for a 21.5 knot cruise speed[1] for a 14000 teu container vessel:
| * the size and weight capacity for the batteries being the same
| as the fuel capacity for a 14000 teu container vessel (taking the
| upper figure from [2]) * the battery pack having similar
| gravimetric (weight) and volumetric(size) energy density as this
| battery pack in a modern Chinese NMC EV pack[3]
|
| The short version is that the battery vessel would require about
| 25,000 tonnes of batteries for a 5,000km range under those
| assumptions, which compares to the current fuel capacity of
| approximately 13,000 tonnes. Volumetrically, it's even closer -
| about 17,000 cubic metres, compared to about 13,000 for the
| bunker fuel.
|
| Furthermore, it's worth considering just how much cargo the ship
| carries. One teu corresponds to about 33 cubic metres of cargo
| space (not counting the space taken up by the walls of the
| container), so the ship can carry about 462,000 cubic metres of
| cargo. So the additional space required to carry an additional
| 3,500-odd cubic metres of batteries corresponds to only about
| 0.8% of the ship's total cargo-carrying capacity.
|
| I was surprised at just how doable this is, to be honest. What
| threw me is just how much bunker fuel ships can carry; if I'm
| doing the sums right, a ship like this can carry enough fuel to
| circumnavigate the globe a couple of times over. It may well make
| economic sense but it's not really necessary to have that kind of
| range to operate the ship safely.
|
| [1]https://www.man-es.com/docs/default-
| source/marine/tools/prop...
| [2]https://www.freightwaves.com/news/how-many-gallons-of-
| fuel-d... [3]https://www.batterydesign.net/zeekr-140kwh-catl-
| qilin/
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