59
World’s first 100% battery-electric cruise ship unveiled with 1,856 passenger capacity.
(interestingengineering.com)
this post was submitted on 13 Apr 2026
59 points (95.4% liked)
Futurology
4182 readers
109 users here now
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It's just a concept. If someone is interested they'll start thinking more about it.
But reality is hard against this to work. I don't see ports having the electrical power to charge the batteries, and ships don't generally have a use case for charging the batteries on diesel.
Single use would be trying to market "green" whale watching ships or "emission free port call" to ease getting autorisation with touristic cities closing in on port air pollution.
Power to ports is the least of my worry - that is cheap to build compared to all the other costs.
Charging on diesel doesn't make sense though. It makes more sense to have a 'tug boat' with engines for those trips and then it can do something else (what?). Can an existing ship (either cruise or cargo) tow this across the ocean on need?
in the end though my question is can batteries large enough fit on a ship. Everything else is logistict we can figure out but batteries are not energy dense. Ships have a lot of space (and need ballest weight on the bottom), but is there enough?