MV ''Ampere'' is the world's first battery electric car ferry, operating between

Lavik Lavik is a former municipality in the old county of Sogn og Fjordane, Norway. It was located in the western part of the present-day municipality of Høyanger which is in Vestland county. The municipality was mostly on the northern side of the S ...

and Oppedal in

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...

. It is owned and operated by

Norled Norled (earlier Tide Sjø AS) is a Norwegian shipping company responsible for the group's ferry transport. Tide operates automobile ferries and fast ferries in Rogaland, Vestland, Sunnmøre and Trondheim Fjord on contract with the Norwegian Publi ...

, and crosses the

Sognefjord The Sognefjord or Sognefjorden (, en, Sogn Fjord), nicknamed the King of the Fjords ( no, Fjordenes konge), is the largest and deepest fjord in Norway. Located in Vestland county in Western Norway, it stretches inland from the ocean to the smal ...

, the longest and deepest

fjord In physical geography, a fjord or fiord () is a long, narrow inlet with steep sides or cliffs, created by a glacier. Fjords exist on the coasts of Alaska, Antarctica, British Columbia, Chile, Denmark, Germany, Greenland, the Faroe Islands, Ice ...

in Norway.

History

MV ''Ampere'' is the world's first battery electric car ferry, developed and built in Norway. Its development was the result of a competition, launched by the country's Ministry of Transport and Communications in 2011, to develop an environmentally friendly ferry service between the two villages. It is reported that she avoids the use of one million litres of diesel annually and offsets 570 t of

carbon dioxide Carbon dioxide (chemical formula ) is a chemical compound made up of molecules that each have one carbon atom covalently double bonded to two oxygen atoms. It is found in the gas state at room temperature. In the air, carbon dioxide is transpar ...

and 15 t of

nitrogen oxide Nitrogen oxide may refer to a binary compound of oxygen and nitrogen, or a mixture of such compounds: Charge-neutral *Nitric oxide (NO), nitrogen(II) oxide, or nitrogen monoxide *Nitrogen dioxide (), nitrogen(IV) oxide * Nitrogen trioxide (), or n ...

emissions compared to a conventional ferry on the same route.

Layout

MV ''Ampere'' has 260 ft twin hulls constructed from aluminum to minimise weight. She is propelled by Rolls-Royce Azipull thrusters, powered by two 450 kW electric motors with batteries. The 10 t lithium-ion batteries were developed by

Corvus Energy The company was founded in Canada in 2009. The head office was moved to Norway in 2018. Corvus Energy offers Energy Storage Systems (ESS) suitable for various vessel types, providing energy storage in the form of modular lithium-ion battery syste ...

and integrated by

Siemens Siemens AG ( ) is a German multinational conglomerate corporation and the largest industrial manufacturing company in Europe headquartered in Munich with branch offices abroad. The principal divisions of the corporation are ''Industry'', '' ...

with an overall output of 1,000 kWh. They can be recharged in 10 minutes between crossings from high-capacity batteries at each port. Other energy saving features are LED lighting, solar panels and air conditioning with a waste heat recovery system.

Service

MV ''Ampere'' operates the 5.7 km, 20 minute crossing between

and Oppedal.

Footnotes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ampere Ferries of Norway 2014 ships Ships built in Norway Electric boats