DHL Set to Transport Goods on New Wind-Powered Cargo Ships
1–10 of 65 posts
Re: DHL Set to Transport Goods on New Wind-Powered Cargo Ships
#2For anyone interested in economics and life cycle math (for sailing in general, not the trimarans they are using here) I recommend https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2021/05/how-to-design-a-sa...
Re: DHL Set to Transport Goods on New Wind-Powered Cargo Ships
#3"415 metric tons of goods. That means they have about five times more cargo space than an airplane, but are five times smaller in length than a typical container ship."
Not to take anything away from this (it's great), but for reference, an average vessel in Maersk's fleet can carry about 100,000 metric tons so you'd need about 250 of these to replace a single container ship.
Not sure why the article decided to compare cargo capacity of a airplane with the length of a container ship, but alas.
Re: DHL Set to Transport Goods on New Wind-Powered Cargo Ships
#4I love this idea, but do these ships exist yet? I can only find renderings, and the company's "roadmap" page is not a roadmap (https://vela-transport.com/feuille-de-route/).
The only real footage I can find is a construction video from a year ago: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DL9CSLdtkaP/
Re: DHL Set to Transport Goods on New Wind-Powered Cargo Ships
#5This is like the 1984 calendar ripping meme except the year is 1600.
Re: DHL Set to Transport Goods on New Wind-Powered Cargo Ships
#6At the risk of sounding overly negative, these things are pretty much always vanity projects. Someone wanted a really cool boat and managed to get some investors onboard. It’s more about an aesthetic than a business case.
We’re talking here about a fairly large crew that will transport a small amount of cargo while taking a really long time. On top of that, these aren’t container ship so loading/unloading will take a long time. There is no economic case here.
The only way you can make this somewhat work is by selling the aesthetic/story. E.g.: this coffee was shipped by sailboat. But even then, notice how every company linked in the article of another commenter aren’t actually operating anymore…
Re: DHL Set to Transport Goods on New Wind-Powered Cargo Ships
#7"415 metric tons of goods. That means they have about five times more cargo space than an airplane, but are five times smaller in length than a typical container ship." Not to take anything away from this (it's great), but for reference, an average vessel in Maersk's fleet can carry about 100,000 metric tons so you'd need about 250 of these to replace a single container ship. Not sure why the article decided to compa…
This might be useful for a tiny island. Ship from a large Caribbean island to a small one for example. The distance means the round trip is day (night?) trip, and there a things you want shipped in every day, but airplanes are expensive. I'm sure there are other niches where there is only a small amount of cargo going from point A to point B as well. However in general the world needs more cargo and so this doesn't make sense for most.
Re: DHL Set to Transport Goods on New Wind-Powered Cargo Ships
#820 years ago I read this magazine article about putting kites on container ships for efficiency. This gadget seems to have durable appeal to entrepreneurs and/or suckers.
https://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2005/09/17/sa...
The company recently went bankrupt, by the way. It turns out that gigantic container ships are already incredibly efficient.
Re: DHL Set to Transport Goods on New Wind-Powered Cargo Ships
#9"415 metric tons of goods. That means they have about five times more cargo space than an airplane, but are five times smaller in length than a typical container ship." Not to take anything away from this (it's great), but for reference, an average vessel in Maersk's fleet can carry about 100,000 metric tons so you'd need about 250 of these to replace a single container ship. Not sure why the article decided to compa…
This might be useful for a tiny island. Ship from a large Caribbean island to a small one for example. The distance means the round trip is day (night?) trip, and there a things you want shipped in every day, but airplanes are expensive. I'm sure there are other niches where there is only a small amount of cargo going from point A to point B as well. However in general the world needs more cargo and so this doesn't m…
Maybe they might not be restricted to Long Beach or Port Newark.
Re: DHL Set to Transport Goods on New Wind-Powered Cargo Ships
#10"415 metric tons of goods. That means they have about five times more cargo space than an airplane, but are five times smaller in length than a typical container ship." Not to take anything away from this (it's great), but for reference, an average vessel in Maersk's fleet can carry about 100,000 metric tons so you'd need about 250 of these to replace a single container ship. Not sure why the article decided to compa…
This might be useful for a tiny island. Ship from a large Caribbean island to a small one for example. The distance means the round trip is day (night?) trip, and there a things you want shipped in every day, but airplanes are expensive. I'm sure there are other niches where there is only a small amount of cargo going from point A to point B as well. However in general the world needs more cargo and so this doesn't m…
I actually think there's an argument to be made for this to be an alternative to typical cargo ship operations.
The challenge when moving goods via ocean vessel is that everything takes _a long_ time. Loading and unloading the vessel can take days. Transit is weeks. Unloading the vessel takes days.
You have 2 options now: air freight which is crazy expensive but gets it there in a few days max or ocean freight which is relatively cheap but might take weeks. If you can cut out vessel loading/unloading you save at least a week.