Electric ships are here — but they won’t be crossing oceans yet

Electric shipping has reached a major milestone, but long-haul routes remain a distant dream.

This month Australian shipbuilder Incat launched Hull 096, a 427-foot fully electric ferry built for South American operator Buquebus.

The vessel, now docked in Hobart, Tasmania, is the largest electric vehicle ever built. It is designed to carry 2,100 passengers and 225 vehicles across the Río de la Plata between Buenos Aires and Uruguay and is powered by about 275 tons of batteries.

Incat’s chairman and founder, Robert Clifford, said ships like Hull 096 are still best suited for short distances — not the open ocean.

Density dilemma

“There’s not the slightest doubt that under 50 miles, electric will be virtually 100%,” Clifford told Business Insider. “When you’re talking 200 miles, it might only be 50%. Over that, it’d be zero at the moment.”

He said the main issue was the limited energy density of batteries, which still don’t offer the same storage capacity per weight and volume as fossil fuels.

That’s why Incat is focusing on ferries for high-density, relatively short routes like those in the English Channel or the Baltic Sea instead of oceangoing ships.

“We’re ferry boat builders,” Clifford said. “Even a very large ferry for most routes would not go over about 160 meters.”

Still, Clifford believes Hull 096 marks a turning point for clean maritime transport.

“The ship changes the game,” he said in a press release earlier this month. “We’ve been building world-leading vessels here in Tasmania for more than four decades, and Hull 096 is the most ambitious, most complex, and most important project we’ve ever delivered.”

The ferry boasts a 40 megawatt-hour battery — the largest installed on a ship — feeding eight waterjets designed by Finnish firm Wärtsilä.

The interior, which includes a 2,300-square-meter duty-free shopping deck, is set to be completed this year ahead of trials on Tasmania’s Derwent River.

Buquebus had originally commissioned Hull 096 as a liquid natural gas-powered ferry, but Incat convinced the company to go electric.

And while Clifford is bullish on the tech, he said real-world adoption depends on port infrastructure and customer readiness. “We simply need the shipowner to do their sums.”

He said there’s been strong demand since Hull 096’s launch and was in talks with a dozen “serious” clients from Europe and South America.

“I’ve been in this entrepreneurial business for 30-odd years, and we’ve never had so many serious potential orders,” he said.

Growth challenge

Still, scaling production in Tasmania is a massive leap. “We’ve been building one or two boats a year,” Clifford said. “Building four or more large boats a year is a massive increase in the size of the company,” which would require going from 500 to 3,000 staff, he said.

“That’s today’s challenge — how do we transition to a significant shipbuilder?”

Whether Tasmania becomes a global hub for electric shipbuilding remains to be seen.

William “Boeing, for instance, had a small shipyard in Seattle,” Clifford said. “It probably wasn’t the best place in the world to start building airplanes. But he did, and then he sold 100 to the US Army.

“He suddenly went from a small boat builder to a leading aircraft manufacturer all in a period of about a year or two. That sort of challenge is ahead of us.”

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