VESSEL REVIEW | Mindu – Electric sightseeing vessel built for China’s Minjiang River

Chinese operator Fuzhou Liangjiang Sian Passenger Transport Company recently placed a new electric sightseeing vessel into service in Fujian province.

Built by Fujian Shipbuilding subsidiary Funing Heavy Industry to a design by the Yangtze River Ship Design Institute, Mindu (闽都号) was developed to run purely on battery power in fulfilment of the owner's requirement for low noise and emissions.

Part of a growing electric vessel fleet

The development of Mindu is in line with the Fujian provincial government's "Electric Fujian" pilot project that entails the introduction of electric vessels in local waters as a way of curbing emissions. Molihao, an earlier sightseeing vessel in the same owner's fleet, was also designed and built to satisfy this objective.

The vessel and others in the owner's fleet are also being promoted as alternatives to tour buses for sightseeing trips in the same area of operations. This will then help decongest vehicular traffic on the bridges that cross the Minjiang River.

Ideal propulsion for short inland routes

The newbuild adopts a steel monohull design with twin sterns. It has an LOA of 20.79 metres (68.2 feet), a beam of 5.1 metres (16.7 feet), a design draught of only 0.9 metre (2.95 feet), a depth of 1.55 metres (five feet), and capacity for 76 passengers.

A lithium battery pack supplied by CATL delivers a service speed of just over nine knots and a cruising range of 66 kilometres (41 miles). Qiu Han, Senior Engineer at the Construction Department of China Classification Society's (CCS) Fuzhou Branch, said that Mindu and other electric vessels in use in the region have limited cruising range, though this nonetheless makes them ideal for pilot operation in Fujian's inland waters where the sailing distances are typically shorter.

Mindu was built in compliance to CCS rules covering B-class inland river navigation areas. The vessel will be operated primarily in the Minjiang River along the route between Yantai Mountain Wharf and Cangxia Wharf.