Electric Commercial Vessels

Finding

Battery-electric cargo ships are in commercial service on the Yangtze, in Norway, the Netherlands and Tokyo Bay, and the first 100 MWh-class short-sea orders were placed in 2026; deep-sea lines are moving to methanol and ammonia instead

COSCO Shipping's Green Water 01 and 02 entered Shanghai-Wuhan service with 24 twenty-foot battery containers each and room for 36, swapped at port. Ningyuan Diankun, a 740 TEU battery ship with ten battery containers and onboard PV, was classed by China Classification Society in May 2026. The 24 MWh Gezhouba, a 10,000-ton-class bulk carrier, was launched at Yichang in October 2025, and Eitzen's Zen ordered two 900 TEU battery ships with more than 100 MWh each from Zhejiang Dongpeng in June 2026 for Hamburg-Gothenburg-Oslo.

Swapping is what makes river freight work. A twenty-foot battery container holds roughly 2 MWh; lifting depleted units off and charged units on takes about as long as working cargo, so the ship never waits for a charger and the batteries can be charged off-peak on shore and leased separately from the hull. The Netherlands runs the same model on inland waterways with Zero Emission Services' 2.9 MWh ZESpacks, first on the Heineken-chartered barge Alphenaar. Yara Birkeland, a 120 TEU coastal ship with about 7 MWh, charges at Porsgrunn instead and has run autonomous-operation trials on its Herøya-Brevik route.

Deep-sea lines have chosen fuels. Maersk's Laura Maersk (2,100 TEU, 2023) and Ane Maersk (16,000 TEU, 2024) burn methanol in dual-fuel engines, with Maersk stating green methanol. The first ammonia ships are a demonstrator (Fortescue Green Pioneer), a harbor tug (NYK's Sakigake) and the 1,400 TEU Yara Eyde under construction at Qingdao Yangfan, with renewable ammonia stated by Yara. In July 2025 COSCO bunkered green ammonia from Envision's Chifeng plant into an ammonia dual-fuel tug at Dalian. Dual-fuel ships can still burn fossil fuel, so the dataset records the fuel source each operator states and never assumes green.

The table below holds every commercial vessel in the dataset: container and cargo ships first, then ferries, tugs, fishing vessels and workboats, each ranked battery-electric first. Class pages cover ferries, tugboats and fishing vessels in more depth.

Container and cargo

Container and cargo ships

Battery-electric first, then green-fuel combustion; in service before under construction and ordered.

All classes

Ferries, tugs, fishing vessels and workboats

By class, then powertrain rank.

Segments

Container shipping segments by fit for batteries

Related

Related coverage

• Electric Marine
• Electric Ferries
• Electric Tugboats
• Electric Fishing Vessels
• Electric Submersibles
• Seaport Electrification
• Autonomous Maritime