[cfn]

I would like to know its price. Here in the Azores Islands there was a project to replace an ICE ferry with an electric one but they couldn't agree on the price with the boat builders. It went up to as much as 35 million Euros but it ended up being cancelled as that, apparently, wasn't enough for a ferry that can do 1-1.5 hour crossings with a dozen cars or so.

[toast0]

Size of the ferry will make a big difference. A small ferry is going to cost a lot less than this 225 car ferry. My quick reading is the Azore ferries hold about 8 cars; that's a totally different class of vehicle.

My local ferry system has an electrification project[1]; the current active project is three 160-car hybrid-electric ferries for a total cost of $714.5 million. A NZ shipbuilder is probably more competitive than a US shipbuilder, and details matter....

This article says $200M [2] which is a lot lower than I expected, given it's a one-off and larger (I think) than the WSDOT 160-car ferries.

[1] https://wsdot.wa.gov/construction-planning/major-projects/fe...

[2] https://www.ro.com.uy/2025/10/16/nuevo-barco-china-zorrilla-...

[cfn]

Two hundred million would be really good compared with 35 for a 10-12 car ferry. We have had larger ferries in the past which would do the whole archipelago and would take over 100 cars.

[robocat]

> NZ shipbuilder

Note that the shipbuilder from there article is based in Tasmania which is part of Australia. NZ isn't yet part of Australia.

[senko]

As a comparison, in my banana country they spent €7.7m on a beat up old Greek ICE ferry that isn't even up to local safety standards[0].

Compared to that, €35m or so for a new modern vessel doesn't sound outrageous.

[0] https://www.morski.hr/jadrolinija-za-7-7-milijuna-eura-kupuj...

[cfn]

I had no idea that would be the cost of a ferry albeit old. We have a massive problem with transportation between islands due to lack of ships/investment. For example, out of the 9 islands only three have daily voyages and right now even that isn't happening as one boat broke down and another is away on maintenance. We could do we a couple even old ones.

The main issue I saw here with the electric ferry was that 90% of the installed generation in the islands uses HFO so we would be charging the ferry with a fuel that pollutes more than the diesel used to run it.