Chinese shipbuilder Wuhu Shipyard has signed a deal with Zhejiang Zhonghuaizhou Shipping Technology to build a pair of river-sea pure electric containerships.

According to the shipyard and its subsidiary Tri Water New Energy Technology， the 400 teu boxships will be the first vessels of its kind in China.

The total length of the vessels is 104.68 m with a beam of 19 m. They have a designed speed of 20 kmph and are equipped with ten marine container batteries with a capacity of 4，400 kWh which have a replacement mode to assist with fully electric navigation.

After the ships are completed， they will work on the route from Yangshan Deepwater Port to Taicang Port – a route going down the Yangtze River into the East China Sea and then into the Quiantang River.

The deal won by Wuhu comes soon after Ningbo Ocean Shipping ordered two battery-powered feeder boxships at Jiangxi Jiangxin Shipbuilding. The Shanghai-listed subsidiary of Ningbo-Zhoushan Port Group booked 740 teu ships in late May this year. The vessels will operate along the Chinese coast once delivered in 2026.

The newbuilds will be driven by two 875 KW permanent magnet propulsion motors reaching a maximum speed of 11.5 knots， powered by a total of ten box battery cells of about 19，000 KWh. These vessels will be among the largest pure-electric boxships.