@@CarDrawingsByErik Technically the wind is owned by the people, so it can’t be taxed as it’s already government owned by definition. Look into the FCC.
4:08 The thin strips of material are definitely not to "tell how windy it is". They are to show vortices which occur if the angle of the wing relative to wind is too steep. Smooth, laminar flow across both sides of the wing (or sail) are critical for generating maximum driving force out of a sail. Most sailing dinghies also use them to enable the crew to see the airflow and make constant sail adjustments - especially when racing.
She said that the black dots where the streamers are attached are sensors measuring pressure differences. I'm sure there are velocity sensors too. it only makes sense.
First off, Fully Charged, you made a fantastic choice with Imogen, amazing presenter/reporter/journalist! Also, I can’t wait to see where this technology goes!
Im on the fence with her. Sure she is easy on the eyes and I haven't seen enough yet to fully evaluate, but in this video it felt style over substance. Outfit and sunglasses more important to her. So I am looking forward to be proven wrong. You I give the benefit of the doubt concerning being a simp or not.
With all that surface area on top, it gives a good opportunity for solar panels and on a big ship they'd be able to allocate some container spaces for battery units. This way the ships could keep moving on the occasions where the wind isn't blowing, or supplement the wind when the breeze is weak.
I completely agree Paul. For example a hybrid would have solar power to pass through the doldrums - something the old square riggers did not have. They just had to ghost *very slowly* through these areas, and for voyages that passed through the doldrums, that ruined their port to port sailing times. Solar power may not be enough to economically propel such a ship on it's own, but it is far better than no power when there is insufficient wind. When both the sun and wind are available, the speed goes up a little bit more than with just the wind.
There is a car container ship with all top surface areas covered by solar. Even then, the contribution to the power generation required is minimal. Wind can generate higher power but its strength is variable. Perhaps we might see future wind assisted ships reroute to get some slingshot effect around major sea storms and generate faster knots but at the expense of expected arrival times.
@@zapfanzapfan great use. Ports are where pollution is most recognized. Ports are surrounded by lower income housing, highest air pollution detected, and more health effects.
I first went to sea in 1974 - red hot new technology was wind assistance for commercial shipping. I retired as Master on very large container ships in March 2020 - guess what? We’ve had sailing ships in the 1980’s 1990’s and then it all died because it didn’t work when scaled up. We had deep sea ships with kites, ships just like the model in the video and we’ve had ships making coastal voyages in Japan and Europe using the Walker Wingsail system…………./ where are they now? Every one of them was de-rigged as the ships still needed to have engines to manouvre when there was no wind and the cargo was needed “just in time” or “Now”. Sailing was used for a fleet of wind powered sailing passenger vessels in the WindStar fleet for about 25 years but soon was reduced to just something to give the passengers a thrill, it simply wasn’t viable and they could never have maintained a set schedule without powerful Diesel engines. Vehicle carrying vessels like the model demonstrated have another problem - stability. There have been several notable accidents resulting in the loss of the vessels because of the minimal inherent stability these multi deck vessel have today, let alone with huge (and folding) masts and to get around that you need to add weight low down in the form of ballast water that makes the ship heavier and also now environmentalists have stopped us discharging ballast water taken in one place and discharged several thousand miles away without huge and expensive electrical sterilization plants onboard. Game changer - not in the least, it’s all been tried many times in the last 40 years and it failed.
Nice! I did my dissertation many moons ago on the optimisation of wingmasts. This has got to help, even if it’s hybridised. The issue is the ship owner doesn’t always pay for the fuel, and the person who wants their cargo carried doesn’t want to pay to upgrade a ship they don’t own.
If you can't make wind power to be cheaper than fuel, you're doing someone wrong and it's not really economically viable. We live in a world where leadership is PUSHING for supply chain collapse, famine and rising costs of EVERYTHING. Wind ships that make cargo more costly would be a dream for that scenario you'd think, especially when mandated before x date. EVs are being mandated, handouts for rich people who buy posh new cars, but unaffordable for the masses. Wind ships unless really saving money, would do the same. Green washing at the cost of most of humanity.
@@alanmay7929 I presume most wind aids are but an additional supplement to cut bunker fuel use and take advantage of higher offshore winds. Nobody has come up with a way of replacing bunker oil with a battery no matter how many solar cells you can fit or wind turbines stuck on top. The big issue is that bunker oil is about as bad a coal in generating carbon. Its so cheap as there is no real demand for it outside shipping. Meantime the ship owner gets paid to move cargo but charges whatever it costs to the agent who is renting the boat for the trip plus the winner in any cargo move is lowest cost even if the boats are now so big as to block a whole canal with a wind change. There is plenty other aids that can help in improving fuel efficiency but they cost cash to install and take time to install. Nobody wants to be the first unless they are guaranteed the aid will cut fuel consumption. The good news now is that fuel inflation (even bunker oil) makes that ROI easier and less fuel efficiency ships lose cargo orders plus the option to pay ever lower wages for crew is ending. No crew, no revenue. Ship mishap = big insurance premium born by the ship owner and then ship agent.
@@stephendoherty8291 lol……. Large chips actually have a lot of different fuels they run of! Recently we have been witnessing methane/gas powered ships for example. Batteries makes zero sense And there isn’t regenerative braking at sea….
Who pays for the fuel? If it’s the owner of the cargo included in the cost of shipping then I hope the free market might actually be the solution to this problem because ship owners using this tech will be able to undercut competitors. That said, I think Mersk actually care quite a lot about their environmental footprint, so hopefully they’ll just do it.
Automation makes sailing ships worth a second look. The main reason why sailing ships fell out of favor once steam came along was the huge savings in crewing costs.
@@موسى_7 doesn't really solve a problem, hydrogen isn't so easy to put into cans, it's expensive and pretty bad for the environment undoing what your achieving at probably a negative, more co2 emitting capturing than saved. Rather than being dependent on one source I think we should use multiple too but with how massive those winglets/sails are going to be even in sub optimum conditions it should probably be fine to sail and will likely have a backup source of energy to propell itself if needed
In 1983, myself, an aeronautical engineer with a sailing background, and a very talented partner, tried selling Hawaii on this. They scoffed, and we went on to win three world speed records for sailcraft. At least its moving forward.
@@dot7107 another design engineer with a CV that would be more than happy to smack you down. Say the word. You seem confident to pass judgement on someone you don't know. Let's get you educated.
Not an expert, but I see two possible issues. The first is the masts will have to collapse or fold down and out of the way, especially for loading and unloading. This will add to cost, plus the more moving parts, the higher chance of something going wrong. Also, any sails large enough to push it along, can also lean the ship to the side depending on wind direction. I worry about the stability of the cargo if there is too much lean. I'm sure they can control this, especially if the sails can be collapsed, but still might be an issue if it's not automated and left to human error. I'm sure both these issues have solutions, but might make it more complicated and difficult to retrofit existing ships.
The first iteration of the design had telescopic sails as the model shows, the 3D animation shows the wing sails that fold down so the windage is controlled in port (the wings on America's cup racers and Sail GP cats are only put on just before the race). Works well on ro-ro vessels that engage in horizontal loading, but much more difficult for cargo vessels that need vertical loading, then the wings need to be out of the way and protected from cranes and dust (bulk cargoes). Some telescoping wings have been designed for this but it's early days. At the moment it seems more logical to generate green fuels (methanol seems the best candidate) and use that in fuel cells (which for the moment need scaling up and proven to be reliable to be viable for any significant vessel size.
@@d.j.vanderschoot3717 The biggest problem I see, is that these sails are huge. I know it's in early development, but with the sails also being able to rotate and move, it leaves no space for cargo.
@@WhynotMinot So this system works well for vessels not reliant on vertical loading such as ro-ro vessels and tankers. For cargo vessels you need something telescopic, but that adds complication. As an engineer I'd rather make something strong and foldable than rely on a telescope system. Nevertheless, mobile cranes have telescopic masts, but there the play in the system doesn't matter too much as the load is one sided only (at the hook). If the load may be from either direction (such as wind) then that play is exposed and complicates matters.
3:59 kind of close. Those ribbons are called “telltales” by sailors, and they indicate flow over the sail. Going upwind, for example, you vary the trim of the sail, and the heading of the boat to keep the telltale flat on the sail at the leading edge. If you have the rest of the sail set up correctly, this indicates the sail is an aerodynamic curve generating lift as an airplane wing, or a windmill blade does.
A talking point that isn't brought up enough is the difference in oceanlife disturbance. The props of a ship slash up animals and cause crazy undersea turbulence, if the source of propulsion is above the waterline, it's an order of magnitude better for the sea.
The kite boat concept of using a parafoil would complement their concept. Their wing sales work great for crosswind and upland but downwind is their weakness. Parafoil kites, can produce enormous power down wind and allow a vessel to sail faster than the wind speed because they can be controlled to do figure 8 maneuvers and in the process generate their own wind even while the vessel is going downwind. Furthermore the equipment needed to attach a kite to the front is fairly minimal.
How long are you willing to wait for your cargo? Hope I'm wrong but can't see this coming to fruition. There is a reason steam replaced sail this isn't an equivalent to EV's at all. Container ships work as they are boxy but good putting huge sails on top just makes that awkward as hell.
Hopefully the new rail connecting china and eastern europe will be able to allow for electrified rail transport between the east and west, reducing or eliminating the need to ship goods along that route entirely. That would make a HUGE impact on shipping emissions.
That would be great, until a country or countries starts blocking the trains like in history with the Silkroad which made the Europeans say "Well, if the spices don't come to me... I will have to go and get the spices myself."
Trains can carry a little over 100 containers per mile of length. So you'd need a train over 20 miles long to compete with a single 10,000 TEU ship. That's a lot of carriages to maintain. Plus it goes through Russia. Plus it needs to change rail gauge. And is not any quicker in reality. But yes, it could save on CO2 which would be a major plus.
Yes it was a fine plan except it didn't work out very well, as it turns out that Putin had other ideas. Now trains can't get from China to Europe, nor will they any time soon.
@@simon7790 The new rail project I'm talking about, that recently got approval for a section that had been delayed for quite some time, bypasses russia entirely.
I would recommend Fully Charged to take a look at Skysails. (And maybe make a video about it) They have already operating systems. And maybe a video about high altitude wind energy in general?
This is not a new idea, Japan did it back in the 1980's with the Shin Aitoku Maru. I remember back in the mid '90s, a very similar idea for a container ship, showing up in a Popular Mechanics or a publication of this type. Then again in the early 2010's. Can't find a copy of it, but its nice to see this company along with others working on this as well. Other companies like: Norsepower, Econowind, EcoFlettner, to name a few, they already have full scale prototypes doing work now. If you look up WASP (wind assisted ship propulsion) you can find a bunch more companies working on this same idea. I hope Oceanbird can catch up and help put that wind to work.
Rotor sail has been tested here in Finland. Viking Grace had the sail for a while. It is based on the magnus effect. The wind needs blow from the side and the rotor must be turned the right way to create the force. If I remember right they had it for a year. The idea was to save on LNG with the sail. But apparently the savings were too little or non existent so they took the rotor sail off. The rotor sail though is, compared to this sail system, way easier to control.
haha! so much 'technology" already exists to solve our problems - just needs to be matched by the appetite and control/ autonomous systems to scale them. Back to the future?! 🤔
I wonder if anyone has considered making these wings inflatable, in the same way that the ISS has an inflatable module? Then you could raise the wing just be compressing air into it, and lowering it by just letting the air out.
I'd be surprised if Nuclear wasn't the first step towards low or zero emission shipping. The tech is extremely well tried & tested in submarines, and whilst multiple reactors might be necessary for a very large ship, I can see it fitting into the existing form factor of a large container vessel. The other issue with wind - and the reason we moved to steam & then diesel (or "bunker fuel" which is the really nasty gloppy stuff) - is wind power can, and does, leave you becalmed. Steam brought reliability and regularity - and speed - which the sailing ships couldn't. Ultimately, I think there will be a variety of solutions: H2, nuclear and wind will all be part of the future of shipping. I rather suspect that wind will not be the key to container shipping though - although I'd love to be proven wrong!
Shipping is one of the few situations that nuclear would make sense. It's been tried but not very successful... only the Russians are brave/dumb enough to operate civilian nuclear powered ships, and all but one of them are icebreakers. We've been building marine nuclear powerplants since the 1950s so the technology exists and is mature. Decommissioning is a pain in the butt (the navy sends entire sections of the vessel to be buried as low level nuclear waste) but the real killer is civil liability and international laws... imagine how enthusiastic a country would be harboring a nuclear reactors sailing under a foreign flag in their major port cities? Any incident could spark an international crisis.
As a former nuclear engineer and chemist who served aboard a ballistic missile submarine, I can say with certainty that nuclear *will not play a large role, if any, in civilian marine propulsion.* While marine nuclear propulsion might appear simple, it's actually massively complex. Ever wonder how an aircraft carrier or submarine can operate nearly full-time for decades without the need for refueling? It's because the nuclear fuel is highly enriched. Many, many times higher than fuel for civilian electricity generation. This is part of the reason why military marine nuclear propulsion is quite cost effective. The problems with highly enriched nuclear fuel are manifold. However, chief among them is the lack of capacity to affect high levels of nuclear enrichment...on a worldwide scale. All that aside, the single biggest issue with civilian marine nuclear propulsion is the dearth of highly trained technicians and engineers that would be needed to run engineering plants in shipping vessels. We never have enough qualified candidates in the pipeline to staff all of the existing positions in the nuclear Navy. That's a problem that would be many times worse with civilian marine nuclear propulsion. Just think of scaling up nuclear-powered vessels from a current number of approximately 160 to almost 5,500. And that figure is for just container ships. For all cargo ships, the number is more like 27,000 worldwide.
I love that you covered this, but it was a bit light on substance! There are many interesting details that could have been mentioned. Why wingsails over conventional? Why did sailing cargo ships fall out of favour historically and how can technology change the equation? (Automatisation, weather forecasts etc). Also, one of the interesting things about this is that the reason they want to build such enormously tall sails is that wind speeds pick up quite a bit when you go higher in the atmosphere.
I remember seeing this concept back in the 1970s. It's a good idea and it's being used for pleasure craft right now. Scaling up and making it autonomous... we'll see.
I love this idea, I wish the video had gone a bit more into detail about how the technology works. Are four wings really meant to be enough to move a 200,000 ton ship?
Nikola Tesla would be so disappointed, he really tried to tell us how to do eneergy and wireless energy transmission. And who's allocating budget to reverse engineering it? Not the trillion dollar company named after him. Batteries, wind, all the barbaric technologies are shoved down humanity's throat. Would you think that people people who push all this also believe that Apollo 11 landed on the moon, with the lander shown in pictures, and that the same thing brought the men back safely though re-entry? Religion is outdated, we are scientologists now. All hail technology.
Two interesting ideas I've come across recently pertaining to the decarbonization of maritime shipping: 1) almost half of the ships on the ocean are carrying fossil fuels. So if we cut them out of the way we do things, there's a huge number of ships that will no longer be needed. 2) saw an opinon piece the other day arguing that the economies of scale for large container ships are not all they're cracked up to be. Huge ships that can only be handled at select ports are more susceptible to costly delays. They argued that de-aggregating shipping into smaller vessels would ease a transition to electric/hydrogen/wind assisted ships, allow them to dock at a wider range of ports, and navigate more inland waterways, thus allowing them to get closer to the final destination of their cargo and therefore reduce the carbon footprint of the last mile delivery part on road or rail. Now, who's to say if this idea will gain any traction, but I thought it was interesting.
I appreciate that every little helps, and if shipping represents 2 - 3% of global emissions and cars 7 - 9 %, why are we not hearing about changes in agriculture and manufacturing that represent 45% and 20%? (figures may be wrong, going from memory)
I always wondered why modern ships don't have sails. Old ships only had sails, and they were able to go around the world. Granted a lot slower than nowadays, but if sails only reduce the fuel consumption by 20%, it is still 20% FREE ENERGY! Plus with modern rigging mechanisms I am certain they could automate the whole thing.
Fun fact: Age of Sail ships, even cargo vessels, actually ran *faster* than modern cargo ships! This is because modern cargo ships run their engines at less than 100% of sustainable limits, because the fuel and maintenance savings outweigh the cost of spending extra time in transit!
Great concept, but how do you load/unload the containers cost-effectively? There are quite a few ways they could do it, but they all would add considerable cost and complexity.
The ship is design to transport cars. I can't see a reason why on a traditional ship you could put on poles and have them higher than the containers themselves.
Great idea, such innovation. And how about those horses that is just standing about in the fields, they might be able to pull some sort of wagon on the road?
I wish my brain could understand the technology better but this looks a great way to go. Wind power has been used on ships for far more years than fossil fuels for good reason.
Of course these type of sails where developed decades ago. Look at Walker Wingsail trimaran. This of course was a pleasure craft, and had vastly different speed requirements. Ie, it needed to be fast, like it’s traditional soft sailed counterparts. Cargo ships on the other hand travel relatively slowly for their size, thus the sail area is relatively less. So can be safe in much higher wind conditions. Note, Walker Wingsail trimaran did not reef, it just feathered the sail. The drag from the wing being less than the equivalent mast and rigging (with sails stowed) of a traditional rig.
Saw these guys years ago, they have improved their CGI render... Still using a mock up in a sheltered bay. I'm not sure these guys deserve a full episode, see what Saildrone are doing, now that is some good shirt, onboard cameras filming in hurricanes! From a autonomous sail boat! Also, 👉Sailing Uma 👍electric sail boat doubles as a electric home, for a very interesting fullycharged episode.
Wind power seems really cool and hopefully they can make it work but I don't like their thing for automation. The only thing that really works automated right now is rail and even that doesn't always work and often tips cargo. Even seeing this on like a 30 or 40 ft sailboat with a crew would be more convincing. Hopefully they can figure it out.
Those wings are enormous. I.e. An enormous surface area. I.e you could cover them in solar panels and maybe get a significant boost from electric propulsion during the day.
Cover the 'wing' surface with solar panels, and enough power could be made to take the ship into port, or give an added boost to speed during cruising.
Interesting you started the report stood next to a Polestar (Swedish hire car, I imagine). They are leaders in full life cycle CO2 calculations and give figures out regularly on their cars compared to ICEs and also are committed to doing everything they can to reducing the impact of their cars further. I would be curious to know what they think the impact of wind powered shipping would be for them. They currently produce and export from China (my car included). Soon they will add a US site, also exporting from there. Every company behaving responsibly must eventually do this (life cycle energy/CO2 calculations) and will need to look at every aspect of supply chains and deliveries. Wind powered ships seem like a necessity as a result.
Just imagine a large (very large) ship in a serious storm and the trouble it could get into with sails. Modern shipping is very different from what it was 100 or 200 years ago and crews are tiny. I doubt you'll find much deck space for masts either.
That'll be great on yachts and cruise liners etc. but having thousands of shipping containers all stacked up around the "wings" might cause a bit of an issue for airflow. This seems great for some use cases but I wouldn't install it on a container ship. If it's not a container then it's just wasting space and eating into economies of scale. If 80% of the deck is dedicated to propulsion then you don't have a competitive shipping business at all. You could make the ship bigger, but making ships larger than Panamax would limit the available routes and into your efficiency. You could build two ships but if you do so then you just halved (or more) your economy of scale while also doubling your cost. Maybe you could have "generator drone ships" in front of and/or behind the shipping container and attach them together using power cables like some kind of ocean-going articulated truck. Use it on yachts and liners that don't need a helipad, but this is probably not something that can "solve the shipping crisis," as stated in the video title.
I think alot of transportation will have to be capable of utilizing multiple different types of sustainable energy all at once. It will be less space efficient, but commercial green energy has taught us you need redundancies for times without solar without wind.
I think this has real potential. With modern weather prediction it would be extremely unlikely that one of these ships would get stuck in the doldrums with no wind. And no doubt they would have a small amount of solar charged battery electric power for maneuvering in port with the wings folded down so they could keep chugging along anyway.
@@jamesstpatrick8493 nuclear is honestly the dumbest idea ever for these type of ships... one must be crazy to trust a random shady shipping buisness to run a reactor in a safe way...
Sails are so old fashion, heavy, and take up big space. A practical way is a combination of vertical-axis wind turbines for generating electricity combined with high-altitude sails or kites for physical pulling power.
M7ch of this work was done in the early 1980's full sized developmwnt ships were built then in response to the 1970's oil crusis. Ok today with computer modeling and design they should be able to get much better efficency and ability but relooking at the data produced would be worth while.
Plenty of alternative fuel cutting strategies - better designed propellors for slower ship speeds, hull paint to improve water displacement, air bubble hull water displacement to reduce water drag, AI trip navigation calculation based on weather-cargo-ship profile, engine room and cargo cooling motor efficiencies (variable rate vs fixed rate), engine waste heat recovery
hmm i think moving to a cleaner burning fuel could also be another avenue to reduce emissions in shipping? i read the marine industry is keen on Methanol and several engines have been developed to run on it? eventually we could have giant series PHEV (basically a BMW i3 scaled up a lot) ships with electric motors and either methanol ICE range extenders that operate @ maximum efficiency for even superior fuel consumption/low emissions or Reformed Methanol Fuel Cells (to indirectly produce Hydrogen) as range extenders to charge batteries? also ships being much bigger than land vehicles could see the deployment of next gen solar arrays that harness both light and heat of the sun - seen a video recently on this...
Green synthetic fuel would seem to be an obvious step to enable sweeping greenification of ships and planes. We just need a gigaton of solar and wind. Manhattan project overkill. I think solar panels have the greatest potential because it's a very thin layer of rearranged sand that produce electricity for 30 years. It has extreme cost potential.
I wonder how such a vessel would navigate places like the Suez Canal. You remember the place where a grounded giant cargo ship disrupted global trade for weeks.
When ever there is no winds, They can also add solar panels on to the wings to capture all that free energy from the Sun to move the boat with two electric motor crossings the oceans.
9:45 Nice to see this but unfortunately this solution has some drawbacks, limitations, it is far from sophisticated! From what I see there are a number of ways to improve the use of the wind for this purpose. As mentioned in the video there is a maximum loading hold capacity ship build planned when there shouldn't be any limitations with a good solution. This is likely to struggle or is unable to power existing larger cargo ships and there are already solutions to very easily convert any size cargo ship and electrically power them at full capacity, Which will be seen in ships by/during the 2030s
Dear UK viewers please check out national grid stats to see where our power comes from. i noticed in the early hours 70% of our energy can come from wind alone. Quite intresting.
This is cool but I still think shipping can be reduced by regional manufacturing and we should be looking at travel through the oceans instead of on top as factors are more predictable in the water.
No mention of the Walker Wingsail? Quite a bit of instructive history there I suspect. The big changes since that first failed are probably the increased cost of oil, the increasing acceptance of the need to stop burning it, and the arrival of tech that will (for example) enable a cheap drone to pilot itself to a large degree. Let's hope for all our sakes that firstly it works and secondly it is used extensively.
There is a huge back catalogue of innovative modern sail designs, including modern incarnations of the junk rig. Even mentioning half of them would be a ten minute video. Wish someone would make it, though!
quite right I remember walker windsails. a great british idea, but 25 years ahead of its time. I assume the inventer was a Mr Walker. a typical invention from our great country
Intersting concept although not new. I could see some practical challenges in harbours, areas of low wind speeds and in simply loading and offloading these ships. Well, time will tell if this idea has a future.
Just a thought - Why don’t engineers and designers cover the sails in solar panels too? I’m sure it would be a challenge but surely worth pursuing if searching for maximum or ultimate energy generation.
There is another side to this, and that is that ANY assistance from wind is going to reduce fuel consumption, and with the poisonous "Bunker Crude" oil most of these monster size ships run on, that HAS to be a win.
What studies have been done on hurricane force winds? How would such a ship fare? I feel at best these will be hybrid ships with a backup form of propulsion.
Container ships run on heavy fuel oil, AKA bunker fuel. It's basically the waste product of the oil industry. If ships didn't burn it the oil industry would have to pay to get rid of it and the profits of said industry would be massively impacted. I expect that the oil industry if seriously challenged would actually give the stuff away in order to under cut any opposing technology. I wish Ocean Bird all the luck in the world because they have picked a hell of a fight.
The idea is not new. I've seen a small solar power yacht a few years ago. The problem with ocean going, is how do you bring the rigid sails down in a gusty storm? Folding , bending, raising and lowering sail booms gets complicated.
1:03 Somewhat of a mistake/ misnomer or a different understanding of what was said bc of the terminology utilized. I am under the belief that these ULCS can carry more than 20,000 TEUs or better put 20k Twenty-foot equivalent Units. Obviously not all containers are 20 foot. Infact those are becoming somewhat of a rare bird and the 45 and 48 foot being the most common that I see on a day to day basis. These larger containers obviously will take up more space on the vessel and so will limit the actual number of units on such vessel. Emphasis on TEUs.
So problems with container loading and reduced capacity aside, surely if shipping containers are going to be on a major tilt and rocking around for a month, alot of goods will be damaged.
I’ve sailed a few times and the one thing that stood out for me was the frustration when trying to go in the direction that the wind is coming from. To be adopted I think it will have to compliment a motor.
Like adding turbines on top of those wingmasts and using them to power onboard hydrogen electrolyzers (and by extension fuel cells) as a backup, as already stated in another comment
Still if certain routes (like airplanes much factor in on every trip) were to offer stronger wind assisted power and either offer faster ship speeds or just offer the same trip length but less fuel use, then ships with sail assistence might reroute along stronger wind routes. Ships are already slowing down to save fuel and leaving cargos to take longer to reach their destination with little choice to cargo users so its not like trip speed wins over lowest cost cargo fees
@@stephendoherty8291 the problem is the with the current techniques of inventory management. Slow shipping isn't a problem, but predictable shipping is important. They want to be able to calculate when the ship will arrive and make sure to sell out their warehouse stock just in time to make space for new stock. However, the random nature of weather will occasionally throw off predictions and force them to pay for extra warehouse space and extra backup inventory.
@@PixlRainbow INMO - faster shipping would allow smaller orders of goods that would not require such large warehousing. Most large container ships are not missing deadlines due to weather but rather port congestion and transit congestion. These are the unknown bottlenecks. Slow shipping protocol is a way of cutting fuel use, most ships are well capable of moving faster. To make up for slower transit times, boats just carry more cargo and gain more fees. Cargo users have little option for faster shipping bar ultra expensive/carbon intense aircargo. So wind can either offset fuel use further (as fuel prices rise) or speed up the boats interport times at no extra fuel penalty. As to port concongestion, this is a bigger issue even if boats were fueled by fairy dust. However massive container ships need long unloading times which slows everyone behind them. Its the same as airport congestion - more planes in front of you to take off = longer taxi times or planes travelling in circles above awaiting a runway slot. Its not the size of the plane landing (not much) but the time to move the "cargo" on and off the plane. The solution there is either fewer bigger planes (but for airlines this just means more bigger planes if possible) or spread the cargo ports around to other sites (witness cargo on the Asian route heading to the US east coast ports vs LA) and perhaps new ports/new airports. The real issue is to reduce the reason to move so much cargo to the destination from the source - attract tourists to tour at "home" or move offshoring manufacture back to where demand is high.
The prototype and renderings did not show how they would get cargo on/off the ship? When I saw this before it was the biggest reason why it hasn't happened already. Big wings on the deck means less room for cargo. I feel like that's just as big of a problem to solve.
That why they are targeting the car transport market. The cars can be driven a ramp on the back or the side. This is how cars are actually transported en mass, not in shipping containers.
Interesting that she said that cargo ships transport 90% of stuff we see around us, and that supposedly means we can’t drastically reduce shipping. Well, clearly we can reduce consumption massively and therefore the number of ships required. And what container ships we do need after that can presumably be this kind.
@@موسى_7 That’s what we need. A degrowth economy. But I think it’s more likely that human civilisation as we know it ends. Unfortunately we don’t seem to have any sense of self preservation. We’re too far down the neoliberal rabbit hole.
the statement "shipping giants are exploring a wide variety of options" seems so hopeful, but it kind of brushes past the fact that logistics companies, ship builders, policymakers, intergovernmental organizations, regulatory bodies, expedition corporations and manufacturers of products all should have taken action at least 50 years ago. The evidence for unprecedented anthropogenic climate change was incontrovertible in the 1960s, the long term consequences were just less well understood than they are today. The fact that it was happening was just that, a fact. Science advisers briefed POTUS Lyndon Johnson on this. The people in corporate / political / lobbying positions of power deliberately chose to ignore scientists' warnings. They intentionally prioritized short term profit, greed and robber baron behavior over long term habitability and global environmental health. The idea that drastic measures are now being taken to innovate existing industries to become less polluting, more circular and sustainable is a misrepresentation of facts. There was ample opportunity since the 1960s to take action, similar to how CFCs and additive lead in gasoline was phased out, in a timely manner to PREVENT the worst effects from coming to fruition. Instead of proactive prevention, people in power made the conscious decision to wait until the effects started to be destructive enough to negatively impact profit. Now advertisements, public statements, virtue signaling, green transition strategies and compliance with IPCC goals is being broadcast by governments and corporations alike, as if they are forerunners of this STEM-based movement to upend stagnant infrastructure and tech with state of the art implementations of cleaner, better iterations. It's too little, too late for poor people in areas affected by failed crop harvests, water scarcity, severe droughts, absent socioeconomic reserves, means to tackle the effects of frequent extreme weather / natural disaster events, rising sea level, acidification, gas / electricity costs. Not one person who was in charge will be held accountable for this planetary destruction 20th century haves are bequeathing to the 21st century have nots. Despite evidence that for example R&D into electric vehicles was sabotaged by oil & gas corporations. There are hundreds of other points of evidence of intentional prioritization of a quick buck over quality of life ten generations down the line. It's sickening and it should mobilize people to be furious and assertive, instead of this pervasive attitude of hyperconsumption-fueled apathy, powerlessness and NIMBYism. This is an amazing implementation that could improve one of the more significant sources of fossil fuel emissions. It also should've and could've been developed and fully rolled out in 1982, not 2022. Personal accountability and liability must be forced upon those responsible to prevent history from repeating itself.
