We Don’t Need No Flaming Floaty Boats

9 Replies to “We Don’t Need No Flaming Floaty Boats”

1. I look forward to all the electric jets … where range anxiety turns quickly to range death. I look forward to Al Gore, and Michael Mann on the maiden flight.

   1. Algore knows not to go on the sparky jet, Kenji. He’s a liar, not an idiot. #Barry on the other hand is a liar AND an idiot. #Let’sGoBrandon remains a potted plant, can’t even lie anymore.

2. Call me crazy, but I was always taught that water and electricity were NOT a good combination!

   1. “I was always taught that water and electricity were NOT a good combination!”

      Even better, SEA water. So salty, right? Imagine a dead short in a lipo big enough to move a ferry. Hard to say what would kill more passengers, the short to the water or the fire.

      And ferries get a lot of hard use, people conveniently forget that. Cars on, cars off, people on, people off, wave action, all of that produces stress-cycles that your normal ship doesn’t see. So the welds crack. Because even the best weld is still a stress-riser, and then the water starts to get it, and it’s sea water, which eats mild steel like candy, and it sneaks in under plastic coatings to corrode copper wires… and it’s made in China, so for sure the build quality is going to be drunk blacksmith-level…

      Yeah, I like the diesel ferry. Not going on the sparky boat.

      1. A BIG difficulty about electrifying a boat is that – any engineer reading this had better sit down, lest you faint – BOATS are NOT CARS!

         A car uses most of its available energy just getting moving; then once it’s up to speed, it uses little energy and mostly just coasts. This is why highway mileage uses less gas-per-mile than city driving; on the highway, once the car is up to speed it uses little power to keep itself there; in city driving it’s stop-and-go, stop-and-go, stop-and-go, and the car is accelerating continually. But a boat spends all its time pushing hard – not quite as bad as accelerating, but a long, sustained effort, so is uses a lot more fuel (or electrons) than a car travelling the same distance (or a train, which rolls on steel and once up to speed, can coast for miles).

3. We’ll soon see it in RCN colours.

4. Hasn’t Toronto ordered electric ferries, but surprisingly no charging stations? Why can’t the local land owners cart people to the island in canoes?

   1. Electric Chargers weren’t in the budget, and neither is refurbishing the old ferries again.

      1. Put solar panels on them – that’ll cure the problem, I’m sure! /sarc