When people in the twentieth century imagined the future, they pictured cars soaring across the skies. We’ve not quite mastered that yet, but we’ve got the next best thing: flying boats.
Red Funnel, a ferry company who runs services from Southampton to the Isle of Wight, has plans to launch the boat of the future next year: the Artemis EF-24 Passenger. Catchy, we know. The vessel, which will be electric and is being developed by Artemis Technologies, will utilise ‘advanced hydrofoil technology’ and ‘modularised battery systems’. For those of us who are not engineers, that basically means that it’ll be a special kind of boat that lifts its hull out of the water in order to go at faster speeds.
The first boat using this technology to operate commercially is expected to take to the water sometime this autumn or winter in Belfast and Orkney. These are being developed by Artemis Technologies, a company owned by Olympic sailor, Iain Percy. According to him, this solves a ‘problem’ with traditional electric ferries: the fact that ‘they really can’t go far or fast’. That’s a pretty fatal flaw for a form of public transport to have.
Percy explained that ‘the flying part here – the foil – it’s the unlocker to do commercially viable range and speed’. He also reckons that, despite these costing more than traditional ferries to manufacture, they could save up to £1 million a year on upkeep and operational costs. On top of all of that, it’s way more environmentally friendly – Percy was keen to develop a ship which had ‘the ability to save enough energy to justify the cost of the technology’.
These high-speed boats use up to 3,700 fewer tonnes of carbon than their generic relatives, meaning it’s saving money and the planet. If these trials in Southampton and Belfast are successful, we could start seeing these foiling, flying vessels popping up at ferry ports across the country.
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