Sweden is the home of many things I find fanciful: beautiful Nordic people, the nyckelharpa, excellent independent music, and the Movitz, a 75-foot long electric ferry whose battery fully recharges in only 10 minutes.
Movitz debuts this August as part of Sweden’s Green City Ferry campaign to replace the diesel powered engines of public ferries with quieter, more environmentally-friendly electric engines. The boat will set sail in Stockholm, carrying 100 people a short-distance of 7.5km between the Solna Strand and Stockholm’s Old Town.
The vehicle is claimed to be the “world’s first supercharged” ferry, by Echandia Marine, the organization responsible for replacing Movitz’s 335-horsepower diesel engine with two 125 kilowatt electric motors mounted on its hull. The conversion is slated to shave off 130 tons of CO2 and 1.5 tons of NOx from the ferry’s annual fuel emissions, simultaneously reducing operating costs by 30%.
Powering the electric motors are two 180 kilowatt-hour nickel metal hydride batteries; the batteries provide just enough power to operate the Movitz one hour at time before a quick 10 minute recharge is needed. Contrary to how this may seem, the short battery life cycle actually negates the need of using larger, more expensive – and often times heavier ─ batteries.
Movitz is part of a larger initiative to set up additional battery-electric ferry services throughout Europe as a means of reducing operating costs and pollution. The service is especially needed in Stockholm, where ferries serve as a key means of public transportation between the 14 islands that make up the metropolis.
Via Wired
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