First autonomous electric (short range) container ship planned for 2020

[Yggdrasill]

I found these news interesting. Yara International and Kongsberg Gruppen are cooperating on the first autonomous electric container ship. It will be able to carry 100-150 TEU, and be powered by a 3.5-4 MWh battery pack. It will be covering about 30 miles per day.

The plan is the following:

Summer 2017: Ship designer is picked and the design finalized.
Right after summer 2017: Shipyard contract awarded, construction begins.
2nd half 2018: Ship is delivered.
Late 2018: The ship enters service, but with a crew on a temporary bridge.
2019: It starts being used in remote controlled mode.
2020: It starts being used in full autonomous mode.

http://video.tu.no/v.ihtml/player.html?source=share&photo_id=17050432

 

[tomas]

Very cool. Do you know what route(s) are planned? Range?

 

[Yggdrasill]

Very cool. Do you know what route(s) are planned? Range?

I'm not sure exactly what the range will be. It will be making four trips/return trips per day, each around 7 miles. I think it will be charged only at one of the ports. This is roughly the route, only at sea: Google Maps

It is of course a prototype, and they are likely to tweak the design once they figure out how best to do things. Then we can expect this to be the first of many such ships.

 

[Yggdrasill]

It's based in part on this concept: Embed video player