Solar Ship Sets Sail to Save Some… uh, Gas

Posted on September 2, 2008 by Matt Embrey in Cars+Tranportation

Toyota’s newest Hybrid will weigh about 60,000 tons, have 328 solar panels and will still burn through about $45,000 of fuel in a day. It’s not the 2009 Prius, thank god, it’s a new hybrid cargo ship that Toyota plans to ship it’s smaller hybrids on. The ship is being built by Nippon Yusen KK and Nippon Oil Corp for their fleet that transports Toyota’s cars, and is part of an Nippon’s inniative to reduce fuel consumption and carbon-dioxide emissions for marine transport 50% by 2010.

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The ship essentially will be a diesel/solar hybrid. The solar panel system will have 328 panels that can generate 40 kilowatts (an average home solar system produces about 3.5 kw). Initially the panels will only power onboard electrical systems which traditionally powered by diesel generators.

Designed to carry up to 6,400 Toyota vehicles, it will receive, approximately, a modest 0.2% of its total energy from the solar panels. They are, however, aiming to bump that up to 2% by 2010. Nippon claims that the system should reduce carbon emissions by 1-2% or approximately 20 tonnes per year. Just to put that in context, that reduction is equal to average emissions of about 4 US households. One problem I have is that it is not clear if that 20 tonnes figure is calculated under the 0.2% or the 2% metric.

The ship should be completed by the end of this year, but aside from leading to bigger and better innovations, the impact is rather small. All in all, this is an interesting concept and I am interested to see what else they plan to do to meet their lofty 2010 goal.

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Sources:

We Heart World, Reuters, DailyTech, PhysOrg, CleanTechnica & EraseCarbonFootprint

Tags:

boat, cargo, ship, solar, Toyota

6 Responses to “ Solar Ship Sets Sail to Save Some… uh, Gas ”

Bruce McIntire

02. Sep, 2008

Hello.

I like your site and wanted to know if you would be interested in exchanging blogroll links.

Thanks in advance

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Kka

03. Sep, 2008

If it cuts down fuel consumption by 2% then it cuts down emissions by 2% - If 0.2 then 0.2.

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John

03. Sep, 2008

This is the worst picture ever! So bad Photoshipping on the last photo dudes!

By the way KKA 0.2 is not 2% but 20% (however your equation is still correct).

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vera

03. Sep, 2008

alright. tell me how environmentally “friendly” it is to build this thing. the natural resources, the synthetic materials and how those are made, putting it all together, the works- everything. are the long term effects of building this more damaging over the course of it’s life span than that 2% of fuel saved could ever make up?

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John

03. Sep, 2008

Well, 2% or 20% are good. Better is 100% with a radical technology that harnesses wind power — sails. The wind still blows, sails still work. As long as Toyota is building new green ships, might as well get serious about it. I don’t know about the Japan-United States transit time, but I know that the clipper ship Cutty Sark did Australia-England in 17 days. How fast do we need these cars, anyway?

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Emiliano Jordan

09. Sep, 2008

I saw (and of course can’t remember where) a ship that was attaching the equivalent of a huge parachute sail onto the ship. to cut down on fuel from England to the US. That seems like a much quicker and more practice way to immediately increase fuel economy (at least if the wind is blowing). Not to mention manufacturing costs.

Cheers,

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