Last month, a curious 40ft boat, hull emblazoned with yellow and white stripes, returned to Plymouth after a three-week mission mapping 386 sq miles of ocean floor. Its crew, however, had never left Essex. From there, they had guided the USV Maxlimer remotely. USV stands for Uncrewed Surface Vessel and it is hoped that such craft can help map all of the globe’s ocean floors by the end of the decade.
On the same day – August 14 – a similar vessel was pulling into the Naval base at Faslane – the difference being that RNMB Harrier can deploy its scanning capabilities to hunt for mines. And this month, had it not been for Covid-19 restrictions, a sleek uncrewed trimaran would have left Plymouth, marking the 400th anniversary of the Pilgrim Fathers crossing for America.
The Mayflower Autonomous Ship (MAS) will now have to make that journey next year. But it is operational, and remains a stark statement of how far sea transport has come in the intervening centuries.
The modern Mayflower uses an artificial intelligence “captain” to self-navigate without human intervention – even in the open ocean without data connectivity. Its technology, like the semi-autonomous “over-the-horizon” systems of the Maxlimer, suggest that after thousands of years of seafaring, sailors in future may increasingly be on-board computers, or landlubbers using remote-control.
And for a host of reasons, from safety to cost to carbon emissions, the advances made by small futuristic-looking vessels like the Mayflower and the Maxlimer are already coming to far larger and more workmanlike craft – from ferries to cargo ships.
Ships
Take the Falco. Some 18 months ago, the 170ft long car ferry, which entered service with Finferries in 1993, set sail from Parainen, in southern Finland, and sailed just over a mile to the Nauvo archipelago. There were 80 passengers on board, but no captain at the helm. Instead the boat was fully automated. On its return journey, it was controlled remotely, from the city of Turku, 30 miles away.
The most significant of this new breed of boat, however, will carry not passengers but freight. Yara Birkeland is a 260ft container ship under construction which is both autonomous and electric.
Its parent company, Norwegian fertiliser producer Yara, claims it will reduce truck haulage by 40,000 journeys a year, and calls it “a game changer”. Perhaps. But there’s a long way to go.
Goods are transported in TEUs – “20ft equivalent units”, like shipping containers. The Yara Birkeland is a 120-TEU ship. The world’s biggest conventional container ship, at 400m long, is the OOCL Hong Kong, and can carry 21,413 TEUs.
Still, Rolls-Royce, predicts that remote controlled ocean going ships will be active by 2030, and fully autonomous ocean going ships will be on the seas by 2035.
“Autonomous shipping is the future of the maritime industry,” notes Mikael Mäkinen, president of its marine division. “As disruptive as the smartphone, the smart ship will revolutionise the landscape of ship design and operations.”
Rolls Royce tests a prototype remote controlled cargo ship
Most obviously, future cargo ships dispense with crew quarters, so Rolls’s sketches for autonomous vessels allow for containers to be stacked, and fuel burned, more efficiently – up to 15pc more efficiently.
Such savings add up given that there are 96,000 merchant vessels in the world, carrying around 90pc of global trade that is relentlessly growing. Container port traffic rose from 225m TEUs in 2000 to 792m in 2018.
According to the International Chamber of Shipping, maritime trade accounts for 3pc of global greenhouse emissions, emissions which the International Maritime Organisation, has vowed to reduce by 40pc by 2030 and 70pc by 2050.
Unlike cars, however, much of that emissions reduction will have to be achieved by sleeker ship design, smart navigation (using currents and tides), and even upgrading propellers rather than batteries.
Recent calculations show that to complete a 31 day-trip from Asia to Europe the OOCL Hong Kong would need to carry more than 100,000 metric tons of batteries – 40pc of its cargo capacity.
Volume is the critical limiting factor for a move away from bunker fuel. Studies have shown, however, that – as in aviation – hydrogen fuel cells, where gases are combined to produce electricity, could deliver enough energy in a small enough volume to get round this difficulty, even for the world’s largest ships.
Though it would require a huge reinvestment in infrastructure, some countries (notably Japan) are investing heavily in liquified hydrogen, hoping that one day it will be a fuel as widely used as petrol.
We are all familiar with oil container ships. Last December the Japanese Suiso Frontier became the first vessel built to carry large quantities of frozen liquid hydrogen. Liquefying hydrogen reduces its volume by a factor of 800.
- Read more: This is how the US Navy plans to transform its fleet with autonomous drone ships
Road and rail
What about overland? At the moment, only about 1pc of goods are moved between Asia and Europe on trains. But huge, long-distance overland convoys are growing in popularity, notably at the top of China’s governing party, which is committed to a vast infrastructure programme across Eurasia known as Belt and Road.
Rail is almost twice as fast as ship, and cost has fallen from 13 to just five times that of maritime freight. Meanwhile the trend towards bigger, cleaner and partly or fully autonomous trucks could blur the line between road and rail.
Big, articulated High Capacity Vehicles (HCVs, weighing up to 70 tons) are calculated to halve the number of heavy goods vehicles on the road. And a majority of experts in the road haulage industry surveyed recently said they expect autonomy to allow so-called “truck platooning” – close packed road trains – by 2030.
But fuelling such vast vehicles cleanly is a headache. Given that the majority of road freight occurs on a tiny proportion of the road network, however, power could end up being delivered through new roads themselves – known as Electric Road Systems.
But they will take years to built. In the interim, self-powering electric trucks are the talk of the town. Valuations are high: $370bn (£278bn) for Tesla, maker of the Semi, $15bn (£11.2bn) for Nikola, a rival which has yet to sell a single unit.
The Tesla Semi is the company's answer to ridding the roads of gas-guzzling trucks
Credit: Reuters
Turning valuations into vehicles has proved hard. The Semi has been repeatedly delayed. Now the promise is that production will start next year. But with draconian environmental regulations to be introduced in the US from the end of the decade, interest in clean trucking remains high. Tesla’s electric rival, Nikola, announced this summer that it had 14,000 pre-orders for its hydrogen fuel-cell truck.
Reducing freight emissions
Freight transport is usually measured by tonne-kilometres (tkm), a unit representing the transport of one tonne of goods over one km. It is expected to more than triple, from about 100,000 billion tkm per year in 2015 to 350,000 billion tkm in 2050.
Of the big three modes, shipping accounts for about three quarters, almost four times as much as road, which itself handles double the tonne-kilometres of rail freight.
According to the OECD, business as usual forecasts an equivalent jump in CO2 emissions in that period, from about 2,500million tonnes to more than 5,500m tonnes. But it also outlines a scenario in which, despite the huge leap in freight volume by 2050, emissions actually fall.
Some of this is due to smarter logistics, much due to the changing transport tech described above. But there are also a couple of other factors which might just change everything. The first is the rise of 3D printing, which could allow nations to manufacture what they need locally rather than on the other side of the world – dramatically reducing the need for intercontinental freight.
Some forecasts go as far as to suggest that 3D printing could knock 40pc off global trade. The other is the consequence of a warming planet – arctic shipping routes. Studies suggest that, with the right infrastructure, the northern sea route, shaving 4,350 miles off the 12,980 mile southern route from Asia to Europe, could be open year-round as early as 2030.
Read more in The Future of Transport series:
Part one: Is this the end of the road for the traditional car?
Part two: All change as Silicon Valley comes for public transport
Part three: Air taxis and electric planes get ready for take off
Part five: All aboard Elon Musk’s Starship enterprise
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