Car Industry News

Ask the right government department in any G7 state and you’ll find funding to put battery power for your vessel. Beyond funds, new battery makers and system integrators are ironing out safety issues, and a growing number of giga-sized cell factories offer hope that costs will fall for marine energy storage, as ESS choice grows. Efforts are also underway to recycle rare earth elements and to augment or greenify staggeringly high plant electricity inputs. Apart from funding, the drivers of change include constraints on shipping in Emissions Free Areas like the fjords of Norway…

In 1985, Chris Deegan was hired out of Penn State as a nuclear submarine cost estimator by the Naval Sea Systems Command and retired nearly 28 years later as the Executive Director of PEO Integrated Warfare Systems, with the last 10 as a member of the Senior Executive Service. He’s been with Gibbs & Cox since 2013, first as the Vice President of Engineering, and as President and Chief Executive since 2016.Please give a “by the numbers” look at Gibbs & Cox today.Since our founding in 1929…

Months of EU deliberation to decide which business activities can be marketed as green investments have produced a set of draft standards some finance officials and NGOs say are lax for the polluting shipping sector and challenging for buildings.In other cases, they strike a fair balance, they say.As the European Union pursues regulation to try to deliver the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, a powerful tool in channeling funding over the coming decades will be its financial taxonomy - in other words…

Havyard is taking the next step towards a hydrogen system pilot for large ships. The company is entering the approval phase and has signed agreements with suppliers of  hydrogen tanks and fuel cells.If large vessels are to sail zero emission at high speed over long distances, battery solutions does not contain enough energy. Fuel cells running on hydrogen is a solution to this, and the Havyard Group, with Havyard Design & Solutions and Norwegian Electric Systems, is now conducting…

On Christman day, Japanese shipping line Nippon Yusen Kabushiki Kaisha (NYK) cooperated with a ship tour sponsored by Mazda Motor Corporation by escorting about 70 elementary and junior high school students and their parents on board an NYK-operated pure car and truck carrier (PCTC).Since 1996, Mazda Motor Corporation has regularly held a tour of this kind as one of its social contribution activities to give children an understanding of the Japanese car industry, stimulate curiosity, and offer the children a memorable experience.Participants first toured the Mazda Museum and then viewed cars produced at Mazda’s Ujina Plant in Hiroshima being loaded on the NYK-operated PCTC Hestia Leader.

The Austrian petrochemical company Borealis has announced that it is to build a new production plant on its existing site in Kallo, in the Antwerp port area.According to a press release, the propane dehydrogenation (PDH) plant will use the very latest technology in terms of sustainable production and energy efficiency. With this initiative the port of Antwerp confirms and reinforces its role as the largest chemical cluster in Europe.The intention to build a new PDH plant to convert propane into propylene has been known for some time. The propylene in turn can be used to make polypropylene, a plastic with many applications which is employed in among others the car industry.Borealis has now decided to build this new plant at the existing Borealis production site in Kallo.

Spanish dock workers on Wednesday called off a planned three-day strike next week after the government said it would delay plans to reform the sector and instead open talks with the unions.   The standstill was due to take place every other hour on Feb. 20, 22 and 24 at dozens of Spanish ports which employ more than 6,000 stevedores and handle an estimated 500 million tonnes of merchandise a year.   The strike was called after the Spanish government announced plans to overhaul the way ports are managed and allow companies to hire their own personnel instead of unionised staff.   Export chains in Spain, especially the car industry, would face a major disruption if a strike of three days or more was to be held. Reporting by Julien Toyer

NAVTOR will spend the next three years helping the EU chart a route towards autonomous vessels, as it was selected to represent the maritime industry in the ENABLE project - conceived to prove, verify and validate the safety of autonomous vehicles in Europe. NAVTOR has now received funding to investigate the concept of ‘shore-based bridges’, a crucial steppingstone on the path to autonomy. ENABLE was originally proposed by the car industry, before the EU widened its scope to take in the full spectrum of transport, including ships.

TNO and Imtech Marine have signed an agreement expressing intent to work together on research and development projects. The signing took place on January 21 at Imtech Marine in Rotterdam. TNO and Imtech have joined forces many times over the years and see possibilities to further strengthen each other and in doing so deliver added value to the market and society, said the contract signatories, Henk Geveke, General Director of Defence & Security on behalf of TNO, and André Meijer, Managing Director on behalf of Imtech Marine.

There’s a new designer in the driving seat at Alu Design. Per Ivar Selvaag, the former Lead Designer at BMW Group and Chief Designer of Peugeot’s concept car division, has signed an agreement with the Kristiansand, Norway-based company to design its marine pilot and operator chairs. In what Alu Design CEO Einar Ulrichsen describes as “a huge coup for the business”, Selvaag and his team at San Francisco-based Montaag have agreed to work on the firm’s molded aluminum chairs on an ongoing project-by-project basis. As part of the deal, Montaag will not design marine chairs for any other manufacturer. “This is an incredible development,” said Ulrichsen.

Shipping Fuel Transparency Will Lower Emissions and Cut Costs. NGOs call on shipping industry regulator to drive down costs, trigger improved fuel efficiency and reduce ship GHG emissions through efficiency data transparency. Transport & Environment, Seas at Risk and Carbon War Room are urging the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) not to withhold data on ship efficiency and fuel consumption. The call for action follows moves by some industry groups to undermine initiatives…

Rosneft President, Chairman of the Management Board Igor Sechin and AVTOVAZ President Bo Inge Andersson signed an Agreement of development of strategic cooperation, which significantly expands the scale of partnership between the companies. Among other things the document envisages the development, testing and introduction of lubricant materials and other Rosneft oil products required by AVTOVAZ businesses; and the possibility of closing of long-term contracts for the supply of AVTOVAZ production facilities with high-quality lubricant materials and oil products. Such a cooperation configuration will allow AVTOVAZ to optimize the purchasing procedures and curtail production expenditures.

Xervo is a supplier of lifeboat systems to jack-up platforms that meet NORSOK standards. This know-how is now being used to develop safe and cost-effective lifeboat systems for the SOLAS market. The Danish lifeboat producer Xervo is now announcing a SOLAS version of its popular Boat-In-A-Box lifeboat and rescue boat systems. In recent years the company has had major success with its state-of-the-art lifeboat, developed in co-operation with Maersk Drilling to meet the NORSOK R-002 standard.

The recent 2013-14 National Budget of Trinidad and Tobago firmly highlighted the government’s intention to endorse Shipbuilding and Repair as a means of diversifying our traditional oil and gas economy. Trinidad & Tobago is in the middle of the world’s shipping lanes with an approximate 31,000 voyages per year passing within 25 nautical miles, positioning the location as an attractive choice for vessels traversing these principal routes. In addition, approximately 14,000 oceangoing vessels pass through the Panama Canal each year and this is expected to double after mid-2015…

The Norwegian shipping industry is teaming up and has taken a leading role in developing battery-powered ships. The first four hybrid vessels will start to sail in 2013/14. In 2015, they will be followed by the world largest fully electric ferry, which will regularly cross Norway’s largest fjord. Some 120 managers representing the entire maritime cluster were gathered at a DNV seminar last week. “15 years ago, the Norwegian cluster was looking into opportunities for gas-fuelled ships. Today, Norway is the front-runner when it comes to LNG-fuelled ships.

The Carrier Car industry has emerged from the global recession with what looks like limited damage compared with the head-on collision others experienced. Drewry believes that this sector, with its small orderbook, is better positioned than most others in the shipping industry, who suffer from large newbuilding orderbooks, to weather a double-dip recession. The downturn hurt car-carrying vessels, with capacity utilisation falling significantly. Operators are now less likely to charter tonnage for long periods, instead placing an emphasis on full employment of owned tonnage. With limited numbers of newbuild vessels coming into service, increased demand is easier to meet and an excess of new capacity is not going to blight operators, if the economy retrenches.

Cargotec has signed its first contract for MacRack, an electric-drive innovation for MacGregor side-rolling hatch covers which combines two operations, raising a cover, and moving it sideways to open or close the hatch, and which generated great interest at Marintec China exhibition. Zhenghe Shipyard has ordered Cargotec’s all-electric MacRack system to open and close side-rolling hatch covers on a 47,000 dwt bulk carrier being built for a Chinese owner and scheduled for delivery in July 2012.

MAN Diesel & Turbo introduced its Liquid ME-GI (Liquid Gas Injection) engine. The Liquid ME-GI is powered by LPG (Liquid Petroleum Gas), a smaller market than LNG but of significance in certain segments such as the small tankers that ply river traffic and coastal shipping routes. The Liquid ME-GI is a variant of MAN Diesel & Turbo‘s ME-GI engine, whose control and safety system is based on the experience gathered since the mid-1990s at working gas plants, including a 12K80MC-GI-S in Japan, and the development of a VOC (Volatile Organic Compound) engine in the late 1990s.

In the first six months of 2001, throughput in the port of Rotterdam increased to 161.8 million tons, 2.3% more than in the first half of 2000. The transshipment of coal (+26%), petrochemical products and petcokes(+%), crude oil (+7.5%) and agribulk (+16%) in particular contributed to the good result. Other liquid bulk (chemicals, oil and fats, -2%), other dry bulk (including sand, phosphates, minerals, -%), ores and scrap (-10.2%) and the three general cargo groups (roll on/roll off, containers and other general cargo) showed a decrease. Total incoming trade increased by 5%, while outgoing trade was down 6%. During the first six months, growth gradually slackened off again.