Re:Electric Ship Batteries Promise Compact, Cooler Power
by WJW on Thursday November 12, 2026 @03:24PM
(#50473656)
> You still have to deal with a lot of specialized infrastructure and engine design.
Is that really such a downside? Ports are full of specialized infrastructure anyway, and the costs of engine design can be amortized over many engines to be quite minimal overall. Once you've done the design work an ammonia engine isn't more expensive than a hydrogen or diesel engine. And the upsides of ammonia are substantial: fairly easy to handle, quite energy dense and most importantly it is already produced worldwide in huge amounts.
Is that really such a downside? Ports are full of specialized infrastructure anyway, and the costs of engine design can be amortized over many engines to be quite minimal overall. Once you've done the design work an ammonia engine isn't more expensive than a hydrogen or diesel engine. And the upsides of ammonia are substantial: fairly easy to handle, quite energy dense and most importantly it is already produced worldwide in huge amounts.