# Surprise Breakthrough Solves Shipping's BIGGEST Problem ## Метаданные - **Канал:** Two Bit da Vinci - **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9R6ln7pr5QU - **Дата:** 04.04.2026 - **Длительность:** 12:27 - **Просмотры:** 236,731 ## Описание Every single day, 100,000 cargo ships burn some of the dirtiest fuel on the planet to move 90% of everything you own. But for 5,000 years, they did it for free — using wind. So why did we stop? And more importantly: are we finally going back? In this video, we break down the three technologies bringing wind power back to modern shipping — Flettner rotors, rigid wing sails, and a full-blown commercial sailboat that just crossed the Atlantic carrying real cargo. We cover: How Norsepower's spinning cylinders use the Magnus effect to cut fuel by up to 25% How BAR Technologies — born from America's Cup racing and Formula 1 — built a three-element airplane wing for cargo ships How the Neoliner Origin became the world's first modern wind-powered cargo ship, survived a North Atlantic hurricane on its maiden voyage, and still delivered on time The actual math: can a 265-container sailboat compete with a 12,500-container mega-ship on a per-container-mile basis? 0:00 - Introduction: Wind-Powered Shipping is Here 1:08 - Norse Power: Spinning Rotor Sails 3:29 - Bar Technologies: Rigid Wing Sails 6:58 - Neoliner: Crossing the Atlantic on Wind 9:38 - Kite Sails & Other Approaches 10:09 - The Future: 40,000 Ships by 2050 12:15 - Outro This Video is sponsored by Meliore. 》》》SUPPORT THE SHOW!《《《 Become a MEMBER! https://twobit.link/Member Our Podcast! https://twobit.link/Podcast Join our Newsletter! https://twobit.link/Newsletter Join our Discord! https://twobit.link/Discord Buying a Tesla? https://twobit.link/Tesla 》》》OUR PARTNERS《《《 Protect Yourself Online: https://twobit.link/DeleteMe 》》》GOING SOLAR?《《《 Energy Sage for Solar ⟫ https://twobit.link/EnergySage 》》》COMPANY OUTREACH 《《《 Sponsor A Video! sponsors@twobit.media 》》》CONNECT WITH US 《《《 Twitter 》   / twobitdavinci   Facebook 》   / twobitdavinci   Instagram 》  / twobitdavinci   ## Содержание ### [0:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9R6ln7pr5QU) Introduction: Wind-Powered Shipping is Here Global shipping is the backbone of the modern world. 90% of everything you own cross the ocean to get to you. But as the world decarbonizes, shipping has proved to be one of the hardest industries to clean up. That's why some of the smartest engineers on the planet have turned to a very unlikely hero. Technology we moved off over a century ago. But wind is making a comeback. And this is not like the wind of old. We're talking about carbon fiber, advanced aerodynamics, AI optimized routing, and the kind of material science that came out of Formula 1, and the America's Cup. And right now, a brand new cargo ship with mass taller than the Statue of Liberty is crossing the Atlantic Ocean every month. When I started making this video, this was a concept, but today this is happening. I'm Ricky, and this is Two Bit Da Vinci. Modern engineers have figured out that we can move ships with wind in completely different ways. Each is a different engineering philosophy. From spinning cylinders, rigid wing sails to modern soft sails, and even flying kites hundreds of meters in the air. Real companies are shipping real cargo with all of them right now. Let's start with the one that looks the least like a sail. Imagine a smooth cylinder about ### [1:08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9R6ln7pr5QU&t=68s) Norse Power: Spinning Rotor Sails 35 m tall standing on the deck of a cargo ship and it spins and somehow the ship moves. This is the flattener rotor and it works on the Magnus effect. The same physics that make a curveball curve. When a spinning cylinder meets a crosswind, the air speeds up on one side and slows on the other. The pressure difference creates thrust perpendicular to the wind forward. For every kilowatt of electricity we need to feed in, we gain 10 kowatt propulsive power out of the system. 10 to one. That means you put in a kilowatt of input to spend that rotor and you get 10 kW of propulsion. The company behind this is Norse Power, a Finnish company that spent 15 years doing one thing, making rotor sails work on real commercial ships. They've installed 38 rotors on 22 vessels and they just opened the world's first dedicated rotor sale factory and they're pumping out 50 units a year, scaling eventually to 100. The fuel savings are around 5 to 25% depending on the routing conditions. Their ship connector averages 25% savings in the North Sea, while peaks hit 70% in strong winds. But here's my favorite part. We have uh some customers that they are able to go out when their peers are staying in port because it's too heavy weather. They can propel through the weather because they are using the weather to help go through the waves. And last month, Norse Power launched the Spirit of Tuloose, a ship that will carry Airbus airplane parks across the Atlantic. Each of them will be equipped with six 35 m tall rotor cells. So on those ships the power of sales is already like huge. We are talking more about like order of 40 50% of the propulsion coming from uh from sales. 50% of propulsion from spinning cylinders on a cargo ship and every single rotor is built with composite materials containing 342,000 recycled plastic bottles. The payback period 3 to 8 years and the lifespan is about 25. And of course, the fuel, the wind, is free. You don't store it and you don't transport it. You just convert it when you need it as you're sailing. But spinning cylinders aren't the only way to harness the wind. What if instead of manipulating the air with rotation, we used a wing? That's exactly what Bar Technologies did. ### [3:29](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9R6ln7pr5QU&t=209s) Bar Technologies: Rigid Wing Sails The background of the company Bar Technologies is from the America's Cup world. Now, the America's Cup is a an international yaching event, uh, where it's a bit like the Formula 1 on the Sea where the teams from different countries design and race sailing yachts within a box rule. And so, this huge tool set was developed miles ahead of kind of whenever AI got used as a term that we throw around on a more than daily basis. The America's Cup teams were using AI for generative iterations of designs and development of the simulation tools. So they had this whole suite of design tools that they were using to make this really fast race yacht to try and win the America's Cup. So they took the simulation tools technology developed alongside McLaren's Formula 1 team and pointed them at commercial shipping. The question wasn't, can we put a sail on a ship? It was, what is the mathematically optimal design to extract thrust from wind on a cargo ship crossing any ocean in any season? The answer, a three element rigid wing sail, 40 m tall, standing vertically on the deck. And it's not a soft sail. It's basically an airplane wing. Think about a plane coming in to land. Those flaps that extend to create maximum lift. That's exactly what this is, but rotated vertically. Three aerrow foil shapes with slot gaps between them that let air reattach and reduce drag. The result is 2 and 1/2 times the thrust of a single surface the same size. But here's what really surprised me. The whole thing is fully automated. The wing reads wind speed and direction through sensors and continuously adjust its angle and camber to maximize thrust. Headwind, it flattens to minimize drag. Sidewind, it opens up for maximum power. There's no ropes and there's no sailors climbing mass like you would imagine in the olden days. Just push a button. And getting here took serious persistence. This was new technology. Today, Bar has four ships already deployed and six more coming later this year. The brand's Hatch, an oil tanker built from scratch with three wind wings, completed its maiden voyage last September, and the results were actually better than they thought. In good conditions, you know, we've seen 18 tons a day of fuel savings from having a couple wings fitted to a ship. 18 tons of fuel saved in a single day. And during one sustained 6-h hour window, wind provided more than a third of the trip's total propulsion of a fully loaded oil tanker. And we have such confidence in our simulations that every wing we sell, we sell it with a performance guarantee that in this wind direction and this wind angle, you will see this steel saving or this thrust power from the wind. Now that's confidence in your engineering when you can guarantee it. Union Maritime has now committed to 34 wind assisted vessels, the world's largest fleet with this technology. The payback period is about 3 to 5 years, similar to the last one we talked about, and independent life cycle assessment confirmed the wings pay back their own carbon footprint in under 6 months. When I first wanted to make this video in 2022, this was largely theoretical and experimental. But according to bar, we've hit a tipping point as of 2025, and this technology is here. So, rotors save 5 to 25%, wings push even further, but they're all assist technologies. The engine is still doing most of the work. And that brings us to a third approach, modern sails. This is the most traditional design, what you're probably imagining when you think sailing ship, but with a very modern twist. On October 16th, 2025 ### [6:58](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9R6ln7pr5QU&t=418s) Neoliner: Crossing the Atlantic on Wind a brand new cargo ship departed France on its maiden voyage, carrying Hennessy Cognac, Renault vehicles, and Bento boats. Two days in, she sailed straight into a North Atlantic depression. Force 12 hurricane strength winds and the top panel of her aft sail failed. So, a firstofits-kind ship on its maiden voyage in a hurricane. That's about as bad as it gets. But the ship didn't stop. The crew switched to hybrid mode. The forward mast kept sailing. The diesel electric engine kicked in and picked up the slack. The boat remained on course and arrived at its destination with only minor delay. So, what kind of a ship survives a hurricane on its first voyage? Let me back it up a little. I started my career as a merchant. So, I s on merchant vessels during 7 years. Jean Zanutini spent 7 years at sea. Being a seasoned veteran, he knew just how important punctuality and reliability is in the world of shipping. So, he took everything he learned and spent a decade building a ship that could do it on wind power. This is the Neoliner, a 136 m long vessel with two carbon fiber mats standing 76 m above the deck. Taller than the Statue of Liberty. This is actually in the water right now doing monthly commercial crossings between France and Baltimore. We ate to 60 to 70% of producing power coming from the wind. 60 to 70% of its power comes from wind and the rest from a hybrid diesel electric system that kicks in when needed. The sails are semi- rigid composite panels, carbon frames with fiberglass membranes that fold like an accordion and last 20 years. And the engineering is seriously next level. The mast tilts from 90 m down to 42. So the ship can pass under bridges. That was one of my first questions about this is we've built an entire world and bridges around the idea of modern cargo ships. How would a massive mast look and work today? But clearly they've thought of that. And retractable anti-drift fins deploy below the hole in open water and fold up in port. It's like a transformer. Remember the hurricane? Well, that's where this level of engineering and redundancy is so important. The entire design philosophy was built around the idea that you can augment power from wind and always go back to your backup when it isn't available or reliable. Today, some of the biggest brands in the world are shipping their products on this vessel. And CMA CGM, the world's third largest shipping company, has taken an interest and a stake in Neoline. Oh, and there's one more thing. They have 12 passenger cabins on board. You can book a spot on a cargo ship and cross the Atlantic on wind power. And then there's the fourth approach, and it might be the most creative. ### [9:38](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9R6ln7pr5QU&t=578s) Kite Sails & Other Approaches Companies like Airs are flying giant automated paraphoils with 1,000 square meters the size of a basketball court, 300 m above the cargo ship, where winds are stronger and more consistent. The kite towes the vessel forward on a tether. One of the really cool advantages of a kite is it takes up no deck space and the deployable on demand and they're already seeing 20% fuel reductions on commercial routes. It's the only one technology that doesn't touch the deck at all. So, let's zoom out. Right now, roughly 200 ships worldwide are operating with some form of modern ### [10:09](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9R6ln7pr5QU&t=609s) The Future: 40,000 Ships by 2050 wind propulsion. And that number is doubling every year. By 2030, the industry projects 10,000 installations. and by 2050 40,000. And the regulation is catching up, too. In 2023, the International Maritime Organization set binding targets. 30% emissions cut by 2030, 80% by 2040, and net zero by 2050. The EU has already started making shipping companies pay for their carbon. So, this isn't optional anymore. But here's what makes wind different from every other solution. There's no hydrogen pipelines. There's no ammonia bunkering stations. No nuclear waste storage. Wind has just been there. And it turns out it's kind of always been there. It reminds me of electric vehicles. At the start of the 20th century, EVs were everywhere. Then gasoline won. On range, on cost, infrastructure, electric cars disappeared for almost 100 years. But now they're back and they're doing well. Wind power and shipping is following the same arc. When business was big enough, it didn't matter if fuel cost a little bit more if they could make so much money by being on time. Those key metrics have to be met. And it's why wind kind of took the back seat. But it's returning smarter, faster, and driven by AI and automation, composite engineering, and cold, hard economics. And as consumers, we're part of this, too. The next time you buy something that crossed an ocean, and almost everything we have does, you can ask the brand, "What percent of your supply chain is powered by wind? " For thousands of years, wind moved everything across oceans. It was the primary form of transportation and then we stopped and for 150 years we burned our way across the planet instead. Now wind is making a comeback and it's amazing to see how much engineering goes into this. These ships map their routes. They understand weather and wind directions and optimize every part of the route to make this as clean and easy as possible. And everyone wins. We get our stuff on time. It costs less cuz you're burning less fuel and there's less carbon in the atmosphere. It's the ultimate win-win. But what do you think? How big of a deal is wind power in ### [12:15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9R6ln7pr5QU&t=735s) Outro the future tripping? Sound off in the comments below. And until next week, check out this video if you think you're going to love. I'm Ricky with Tuba Da Vinci. Thank you so much for watching. --- *Источник: https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/47500*