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this post was submitted on 01 May 2024
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Why not an electric train? There is contiguous land between the two cities, and then you don't have to carry your fuel with you or build giant batteries out of rare earth minerals, while risking run-away shorts that will surely endanger everyone on board, and ensure the cargo is lost.
Plus the distance is <300kms.
Probably because trains are limited in both weight and volume compared to ships and also less efficient. If you have this short route and know it'll need this amount of cargo shipped it likely makes sense.
This single ship can carry more containers than any train could be expected to pull, likely by at least one order of magnitude.
All in all I'd guess the advantages are roughly:
Disadvantages:
I would also not expect the risk for catastrophic fires to be all that high. This ship has the batteries be containers. So once you've designed a container that is a large battery, you've already spent so much that a proper BMS including proper battery fire suppression as well as proper breakers/contractors are things you've built into it without even thinking about cost. The separation provided by building containers as the battery is the next line of defence if one container fails spectacularly, it also allows the batteries to be maintained on land, much cheaper than if they were part of the ship.
I expect they are using LFP which isn't fire prone.
Fortunately energy density is not nearly the concern with boats and trains as it is with cars.
And agreed, the modular batteries are a nice touch.
if only we had some kind of wind powered boat technology.
Well there is a reason we stopped using those.
What's that? I can't think of a good one
It's slow and you depend on the wind blowing.
If sails were that great we would still be using them for freight, we didn't switch to petroleum for the fun of it. Environmental issues put aside it's a pretty great source of energy.
For achieving maximum speed, sure. To simply guarantee you get there? Not at all - the Iberians knew how to navigate solely on maritime currents 500 years ago.
We started using pretroleum because capitalism requires infinite growth as fast as you can muster it. Particularly with modern refrigeration techniques and automation, time insensitive navigation for transport could easily be done with sails.
Don't forget square cube law
Yeah, the cons outweigh the pros. Its definitely better to use wind.
If only we could get energy to trains easily and continuously.
Why make trains when we have horses