Stockholm will launch the world’s first self-driving passenger ferry, powered entirely by electricity. The ferry will run between the Stockholm islands of Kungsholmen and Sodermalm, starting in June, 2023.
It is owned by Torghatten AS, one of Norway’s important companies in the transportation industry. Torghattan’s annual revenue is approximately NOK 3.7 billion and it has approximately 1250 employees. Its core business is seaborne transportation in Norway (Torghattan website), with over 90 passenger and ferry vessels. Torghattan is owned by the Swedish private equity company EQT.
Ideas for the ferry started at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim, Norway. The goal was to create more sustainable urban mobility. The company Zeabuz was spun off from the autonomous vessel research community at NTNU, who built the first autonomous ferry prototypes, specifically to develop the autonomy system for these ferries.
Stockholm has many islands. Kungsholmen is central to the city, and is where the city hall (Stockholms stadshus) is located. Sodermalm is a neighboring island, just to the south. The distance traversed is not large, but an autonomous ferry will make it convenient to travel between the islands. There are bridges, but the ferry provides a walkable alternative.
I don’t usually comment on shenanigans at specific firms. But here’s the case of a logistics unicorn, a startup with a valuation of over $1 billion, that so fits the pattern of many startups from my experience in Silicon Valley in the frantic 80’s and 90’s. Burning through cash like there’s no tomorrow. Beating down employees. Inadequate software for doing a large amount of business. A CEO who’s over the top, demanding performance and ridiculing or shunning those who don’t perform to his (most of them are men!) exalted standard based on false assumptions.
The idea behind Flock Logistics is a decent one. Try to pool smaller shipments that normally would need to travel as LTL cargo into a single trailer, and carry it as FTL cargo. How you load and unload it and how you schedule the trips is a complicated question, and software could play a big role. But the essential problem is one of the pooling concept. Can you put together enough small cargoes with similar destination from similar starting points and then meet the time schedules of all the shippers and receivers, with a single truck load? It’s a problem you face one load at a time, and you have to solve it to satisfy multiple customers for each truckload.
It’s not surprising that they have troubles with customer service. It’s not surprising that they can’t sell enough cargoes to fill a truck most of the time, so to meet commitments they have to ‘ship air’. It’s a hard problem to crack. And yelling at the sales folks won’t create business.
And it’s not surprising that the CEO would be a dingbat. Particularly in software, I met one of these a week in Silicon Valley. They think they are Steve Jobs, or Bill Gates (both with reputations like that), or more up to date, Elon Musk, and their idea is great and executable because they found some investors willing to throw millions if not billions at them. But very few have what it takes to make a great company out of a startup.
The employees are the ones who suffer. They have to have thick skins to submit to being beaten up for goals actually not feasible, and they are the ones who have to speak with disgruntled customers and try to preserve their personal reputation along with that of the firm. Especially these days after COVID, employees are much less likely to take that kind of abuse; working conditions are part of their package. They’d be gone even if they didn’t get laid off.
One startup CEO I can think of who seems to have succeeded is Ryan Petersen of Flexport. Despite the billions Flexport has been given, they seem to be able to keep meeting customers’ needs in logistics. And Ryan was smart enough to step away when the firm became so big and needed to be sustainable; I guess he didn’t see it as his mission to run that big a firm with such intense customer service needs.
The story below tells it all. Don’t bet on Flock Logistics being around long.
American Bureau of Shipping (ABS), a US-based classification society, has announced that it is developing simulations of potential green maritime shipping corridors. Such a tool will allow users to determine if a particular corridor is feasible, and what the costs will be.
Simulations will also allow us to determine the range of improvements that will be required, and the sensitivity of costs to many different choices, like size of bunkering facilities for different alternative fuels. These sorts of metrics are very important when deciding how much to invest in a green corridor development.
The article below doesn’t reveal very much. But it’s clear that a major classification society can play a major role to influence the greening of maritime routes.
Supply Chain and Logistics 