Volkswagen News

The world's largest car carrier making its maiden voyage is generally cause for celebration. But in the case of Chinese car manufacturer BYD and its mammoth new BYD Shenzhen -- a 16,300 dwt, 9200 CEU, LNG Dual-Fuel PCTC that measures 219.9 x 37.7m with a 9.2m draft -- the ship instead represents the flooding of a market with cheap electric vehicles (EVs).The world's largest car-carrying ship - with the equivalent of 20 football fields of vehicles - completed its maiden journey late last month to dock in Brazil's Itajai port.BYD…

Tugboat and towboat owners across the nation eye fuel efficiency and emission reduction technologies and techniques in advance of increasingly stringent regulations.he first half of 2025 has seen a great deal of attention on emissions from vessels, with an eye towards their continued reductions in the coming years. Mid-April saw the International Maritime Organization (IMO)’s much anticipated Maritime Environment Protection Committee’s MEPC 83 meeting participants lay out plans for reduced greenhouse gas emissions in the coming years…

The former MAN Energy Solutions is now operating under a new name and has become Everllence.Everllence remains part of the Volkswagen Group, and the company’s product and service portfolio also remains unchanged.The name Everllence is a combination that merges the two English-language terms ‘ever’ and ‘excellence’, two central attributes of the company's self-image.The renaming is not the first in the company's recent history: the former MAN Diesel & Turbo became MAN Energy Solutions back in 2018.

Car-carrying ships have sent more cargo from Europe and China, Japan and Korea to the United States in the first months of the year than last year, shipping data showed, in a sign of companies front-loading shipments ahead of looming tariffs.A total of 33 so-called roll on, roll off ships - designed for wheeled cargo and mostly carrying new cars - left Europe for the U.S. in February this year, up from 28 in February 2024, according to data analytics firm Esgian, which monitors shipping routes and ports worldwide.Those ships will have been able to carry around 30…

The California Volkswagen (VW) Zero-Emission Freight and Marine (ZEFM) Program Administrator is preparing to open a statewide solicitation offering up to $25 million to owners of cargo handling equipment, heavy-lift forklifts and marine vessels for zero-emissions projects:• Repowering marine vessels, including ferries, tugboats, and towboats to zero-emission;• Replacing heavy-lift forklifts (with a lift capacity of 8,001 lbs. or greater) with zero-emission alternatives; and• Replacing…

European automakers are the most likely to be affected by the dockworkers strike at U.S. East Coast and Gulf Coast ports because they rely heavily on those locations, but a longer walkout could prove "debilitating" to the entire sector, industry officials and analysts said.The dockworkers began their first large-scale stoppage in nearly 50 years early on Tuesday, halting the flow of about half the nation's ocean shipping.The International Longshoremen's Association union representing 45…

Wallenius Marine has christened its newest pure car and truck carrier (PCTC) vessel, Future Way, during a ceremony in Emden, Germany on Monday.Built by CIMC Raffles in China, the new 200-meter-long ship is the first of two car carriers that will go on charter for Volkswagen between Europe and North America. The vessel's cargo capacity is equivalent to 6,500 cars, which are loaded and unloaded efficiently through a center ramp system consisting of a long ramp serving all decks.The…

Chinese automakers and shippers are ordering a record number of car-carrying vessels to support a boom in EV exports, data showed, putting China on course to amass the world's fourth-largest fleet by 2028.China currently has the world's eighth-largest fleet with 33 car-carrying ships, showed data from shipping consultancy Veson Nautical. Japan has the world's largest with 283 ships, followed by Norway's 102, South Korea's 72 and Isle of Man's 61.But Chinese companies have 47 ships on order, accounting for a quarter of all orders globally.

Salvage crews worked to lift the first piece of Baltimore's collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge from the water on Saturday to allow barges and tugboats to access the disaster site, Maryland and U.S. officials said, the first step in a complex effort to reopen the city's blocked port.The steel truss bridge collapsed early on Tuesday morning, killing six road workers, when a massive container ship lost power and crashed into a support pylon. Much of the span crashed into the Patapsco River…

The catastrophic bridge collapse that closed the Port of Baltimore to ship traffic is unlikely to trigger a major new U.S. supply chain crisis or spike goods prices, due to ample and growing spare capacity at competing East Coast ports, economists and logistics experts say.With six people still missing after a container ship collision destroyed the Francis Scott Key Bridge, it remained unclear how long the span's twisted superstructure would block the harbor's mouth.But port officials…

U.S. automakers General Motors and Ford will reroute affected shipments after a bridge collapse in the U.S. shuttered the Port of Baltimore, but the companies said on Tuesday the impact will be minimal."We expect the situation to have minimal impact to our operations. We are working to re-route any vehicle shipments to other ports," GM said in a statement.The Port of Baltimore is the busiest U.S. port for car shipments, handling at least 750,000 vehicles in 2023, according to data from the Maryland Port Administration.

A massive cargo ship smashed into a bridge while sailing out of Baltimore early on Tuesday, sending cars and people into the river below and closing one of the busiest ports on the U.S. Eastern Seaboard.Rescuers pulled out two survivors, one of whom was hospitalized, and searched for more in the Patapsco River after huge metal spans of the 1.6-mile (2.57 km) Francis Scott Key Bridge crumpled into the icy water around 1:30 a.m. (0530 GMT).The ship reported a power issue before impact…

A container ship smashed into a four-lane bridge in the U.S. port of Baltimore in darkness on Tuesday, causing it to collapse and sending cars and people plunging into the river below.Rescuers pulled out two survivors, one in a "very serious condition," and were searching for more in the Patapsco River after huge spans of the 1.6-mile (2.57 km) Francis Scott Key Bridge crumpled into the water.The ship "lost propulsion" as it was leaving port, and crew on board notified Maryland officials they had lost control of the vessel, ABC News reported, citing an unclassified U.S.

Automakers Tesla and Geely-owned Volvo Car said they were suspending some production in Europe due to a shortage of components, the first clear sign that attacks on shipping in the Red Sea are hitting manufacturers in the region.The United States and Britain launched a series of strikes on Yemen on Thursday, aimed at the Iran-backed Houthi militia whose attacks on international shipping have disrupted one of the world's most important shipping routes.Container shipping rates jumped…

MAN Energy Solutions has won the contract from Royal Boskalis to supply 3 × MAN 49/60 engines for a 31,000 m³ Trailing Suction Hopper Dredger (TSHD).Each engine will come accompanied by an exhaust-gas after-treatment system, namely an MAN Low-Pressure Selective Catalytic Reduction (LP-SCR) system, that ensures IMO Tier III compliance. The newbuilding will be built at Dutch shipbuilding company, Royal IHC, at its Krimpen aan den IJssel yard and is expected to enter service in mid-2026.The TSHD will be diesel-electric powered with two Azipods to allow vessel operation even at shallow draught.

On November 1, the Longkou Shipyard in Shandong, China held a keel laying ceremony for the first of Wallenius Marine's new Sleipner car carrier vessels.In the summer of 2021, Wallenius Marine and Volkswagen signed a contract for two multi-fuel vessels with the ability to carry 6,500 cars each. After delivery, the vessels will be chartered out to Volkswagen Konzernlogistik GmbH & Co. OHG and transport new vehicles of the Volkswagen Group for at least 10 years, with ship management from Wallenius Marine.The Sleipner ship design was created by Knud E.

British manufacturer Cox Marine announced four new appointments to its Leadership Team as the company ramps up production to meet global demand for the high-performance CXO300 diesel outboard engine.David Gilbert has been appointed as Cox Marine’s new Chief Commercial Officer and Marcus Randall as its Head of Marketing and Communications, while Paul Cavander joins as Head of Industrial Strategy and Heinz Stalhammar as Chief Engineer.Regarding the new appointments, Gavin Wesson…

Shanghai is slowly emerging from a grueling COVID lockdown that has all but immobilized the city since March. Although Shanghai’s port, which handles one-fifth of China’s shipping volumes, has been operating throughout, it has been running at severely reduced capacity. Many shipments have either been canceled, postponed, or rerouted to other Chinese mega-ports such as Ningbo-Zhousan.With the city due to fully reopen on June 1, the port is going to be in overdrive as manufacturers try to fulfil backlogs, with serious knock-on effects around the world.

Newbuild spend for vehicle carriers, including large car and truck carriers (LCTC), pure car and truck carriers (PCTC) and pure car carriers (PCC), smashed past $3.2 billion last week, following big volume orders from Eastern Pacific and Zodiac—an astonishing amount of money for a niche sector, exceeding the previous six years total combined. If we include options, a whopping $4.4 billion has been agreed year to date. Japanese shipyards have raised tariffs to $100 million for dual fuel liquefied natural gas (LNG) 7,000 car equivalent units (CEU), up by a staggering $10 million compared to last year. Chinese yards have followed but maintain a healthy discount quoting $88 million for an equivalent spec.

Heavy tug boats on Tuesday sprayed water on a burning ship carrying thousands of Porsches and Bentleys adrift off the coast of Portugal's Azores islands, the ship's manager said in a statement.The Felicity Ace, carrying around 4,000 vehicles including Porsches, Audis, and Bentleys, some with lithium-ion batteries, caught fire on Wednesday last week.The 22 crew members on board were evacuated the same day. Ship manager Mitsui O.S.K. Lines Ltd (MOL) said in a statement the vessel was still on fire but stable, and that no oil leak had been reported so far.

A fire which swept through a cargo ship carrying thousands of luxury cars and adrift off the coast of Portugal's Azores islands has lost its intensity, probably because there is little left to burn, a port official said.The Felicity Ace, carrying around 4,000 vehicles including Porsches, Audis and Bentleys, some electric with lithium-ion batteries, caught fire in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean on Wednesday.The 22 crew members on board were evacuated the same day. "The fire has subsided in recent hours…

A ship carrying around 4,000 vehicles, including Porsches, Audis and Bentleys, that caught fire near the coast of the Azores will be towed to another European country or the Bahamas, the captain of the nearest port told Reuters on Friday.Lithium-ion batteries in the electric cars on board the vehicle carrier Felicity Ace have caught fire and the blaze requires specialist equipment to extinguish, captain Joao Mendes Cabecas of the port of Hortas said.It was not clear whether the batteries first sparked the fire.“The ship is burning from one end to the other...

Eagle LNG marked a series of firsts when it fueled the 7,500-car carrier SIEM Aristotle from its Talleyrand LNG Bunker Station at the Jacksonville Port Authority (JAXPORT) in Jacksonville, Fla. It was the first time SIEM has refueled the vessel from a landside bunkering facility and the first ship that Eagle LNG refueled of that size from the bunkering facility.SIEM Aristotle is the first deep-sea pure car, truck carrier (PCTC) equipped with dual-fuel engines, designed to operate on LNG and marine gas oil (MGO).