EBDG, Diversified Marine Team on the Electrified Truckable Tug
While in New Orleans, Maritime Reporter TV visited with Elliott Bay Design Group (EBDG) and Diversified Marine to discuss the Electrified Truckable Tug.
Hitting tightening maritime emission targets will require innovation and collaboration across the sector, the type of teaming recently announced between Elliott Bay Design Group and Diversified Marine with the introduction of the electrical truckable tug.
“This is a great collaboration with Diversified Marine; they had a tug design and they came to us to electrify it,” said Steve Carlson, Principal in Charge, EBDG. “It’s environmentally friendly, low noise, and easily moved around; it'll serve a lot of purposes.”
Adam Hutchinson, Project Manager, Diversified Marine, said the idea for an electric version of its diesel truckable tug was hatched a couple of years ago. “We build a truckable tug that is diesel pushed today, but as our name suggests, we wanted to diversify ourselves,” said Hutchinson. “With the electric tug, we wanted to change it up a little bit and see if we could appeal to a broader base.”
With that Hutchinson and team started to research potential partners, and eventually reached out to EBDG.
“I saw that they had worked previously on a similar idea, so reached out to Joe and Mike Complita at Elliott Bay, and it grew feet from there,” said Hutchinson.
According to EBDG’s Director of Sales, Joe Hudspeth, the organization is seeing a pronounced move toward decarbonization. “Whether that means full electrification or simply a reduction in emissions through our alternative fuels advanced technologies, we're seeing requests. And it's not just the ferry operators, but also in the harbor craft, tug boats and pilot boats.”
Hudspeth is a well-rounded industry executive with experience on the shipbuilding, OEM and now the naval architecture and marine design side.
“We're also seeing trends towards evolving designs that are going to include some level of automation, involving that, the various systems on board the vessel and simplifying things, reducing the human factors that could cause some complications. And so Elliott Bay is being involved in all those different aspects, not only on the propulsion front, but also on the automation front as well.”
According to Hudspeth, EBDG took Diversified Marine’s existing, diesel-powered truckable tug design, aiming to deliver a version that is both emissions- and vibration-free. “We can do that with an electric propulsion system,” said Hudspeth. “We are able to remove all of the mechanical components, the diesel engine, the generator, and we can simply put in a battery powered system through permanent magnet motors. If the vessel does need to be hybrid, there is an option to include a generator and give it some onboard power regeneration capability. But the nice thing about it being truckable, is you don't have to have the charging infrastructure. It can be deployed, operate all day long, and then it can be moved back to where it can get its recharge. So it offers a lot of flexibility.”
To date, Diversified Marine is in negotiations with a few customers on the West Coast to bring this new concept to reality.
Watch the full interview on Maritime Reporter TV, for a discussion on the new electrified truckable tug, as well as insights from EBDG on the fuel transition in maritime.