 How can long-distance battery-powered container ships stack up? A speculative Asia-Europe illustrationAnthony Wiskich Research in Transportation Economics, 2025, vol. 113, issue C Abstract: Are batteries too costly and insufficiently energy-dense for long-distance shipping? We consider a container ship on a round trip between Asia and Europe under two speculative assumptions. First, in addition to a battery-on-container-ship (“on-ship”) approach, we study an “off-ship” concept where a dedicated battery vessel can power the ship en route. Second, we allow (dis)connection of battery vessels and charging at sea (stops). We describe an economic model that optimises ship speed, number of sea stops, battery capacities and battery vessel adoption for a hybrid (fuel/battery) container ship. Our main insights: (i) the off-ship approach allows greater flexibility and partial electrification at higher battery costs, (ii) optimal speeds increase and vary depending on the route segment with battery-powered propulsion, and (iii) battery uptake is more sensitive to battery costs than energy density. We hope these insights promote research into the technical feasibility of the off-ship approach. Keywords: Maritime economics; Decarbonisation; Batteries; Container shipping (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:retrec:v:113:y:2025:i:c:s0739885925001192 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from DOI: 10.1016/j.retrec.2025.101636 Access Statistics for this article Research in Transportation Economics is currently edited by M. Dresner More articles in Research in Transportation Economics from Elsevier |
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