ROME – Anyone who thought that the race for electric traction only concerned cars and motorbikes, at most bicycles and scooters, was very wrong. In fact, the Yangtze River Three Gorges 1 comes from China, the largest cruise ship in the world with zero emissions: an aquatic monster that by this year will be able to accommodate two thousand passengers and which at first will be destined to travel on the river Yangtze, in the heart of the country, in a section that starts from the city of Yichang and ends in Chongqing (a route that usually takes 8 hours by car) .The beauty of 10,000 cells supplied by CATL, renowned Chinese company founded in 2011, which has managed to create a 7.5 MWh super battery, as if 100 electric cars all started up together.
Commissioned by Wuxi Saisiyi Electric Technology, a subsidiary of China Shipbuilding Corporation, but with the financial backing of the Chinese government, the Yangtze River Three Gorges 1 was designed by engineers from the Changjiang Ship Design Institute, one of the largest naval institutes in China. And despite the fact that the CATL has not yet provided official news, it seems that there will be two charging modes: one at high and one at low voltage.
With its 7.5 MWh, this electric giant also smashes the record of the Ellen ferry, a 4.3 MW / h boat currently in service in southern Denmark. On the hybrid front, the primacy belongs to the Color Hybrid, a beast 160 meters long and 33 meters wide equipped with four Rolls-Royce – Bergen diesel engines and a 5 MWh battery pack. Since August 2019 it has been moving from the port of Sandefjord pointing its bow towards the beauty of the Norwegian fjords.
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