Malaysia has electric buses, and it looks like we will also have electric ferries soon. Yinson GreenTech, via its maritime division marinEV, recently signed a memorandum of understanding with Langkawi Port Sdn Bhd to set up the country’s first commercial fully electric passenger ferry service. This will move passengers between Kuah, Langkawi and Kuala Perlis alongside conventional ferry services that are already in place.
According to a report by NST, Yinson GreenTech will provide the vessels, while Langkawi Port will operate the ferry service as part of the agreement. Tenaga Nasional Berhad is also involved, developing the power and charging infrastructure, as you’d expect. All three will be working with relevant government agencies, infrastructure providers and other stakeholders on the technical, operational, regulatory and commercial requirements for the project.
The ferries themselves will be based on marinEV’s Hydroferry platform. As it’s essentially a marine EV – not to put too fine a point on the name – it will feature electric propulsion, on-board energy storage, autonomous and remote-operation capabilities, and other integrated digital tech by Zeabuzz. Separately, The Edge reports that the electric ferry will take an hour to fully charge with fast chargers, and that they will be cheaper to maintain than internal combustion engine vessels.
Per the latter report, the current plan for the electric ferry is to run six trips a day. That being said, fares for the trips have not been announced. The report does cite Langkawi Ports’ general manager Muhd Nasir Aziz as saying that the fares are expected to be at a premium. Also cited was Yinson chief of staff Liaw Thong Jung, who said “this project will complement existing ferry operators (in Langkawi). It will not take away [their business], but complement them, and we will increase the number of trips between Langkawi and Kuala Perlis”.
