Höegh Autoliners will commission the first of a series of 12 record ships next week. The ‘Höegh Aurora’ and its 11 future Aurora-class sister ships will accommodate as many as 9,100 passenger cars.
Shipyard China Merchants Heavy Industry has started delivery of the series of twelve Aurora-class car ships to Höegh Autoliners. The Norwegian operator reports that ‘Höegh Auroa’ will be christened this week and then begin its maiden commercial voyage. With a capacity of 9,100 cars, it will be the largest car carrier in the world. The ‘Höegh Aurora’ thus takes over the torch from Höegh Autoliners’ 8,500-car vessels. The Aurora class has 14 decks, five of which are height-adjustable, all designed for electric cars.
Höegh Autoliners and design firm Deltamarin make a strong case for environmental performance. “This will be the first series in the pure car and truck carrier (pctc) segment that can run on carbon-neutral ammonia, as well as methanol. Thanks to an improved design of the hull, machinery, propeller and so on, we will save tens of per cent emissions of CO2 and nitrogen. When the ship runs on lng, there are virtually zero sulphur emissions.”
It is not known where the first voyage from China will lead. The next 11 ships in the series will be delivered one by one until the first half of 2027.
One thousand ships
The shipping company calls this ship a gamechanger. Höegh Autoliners is at the forefront of a movement in which several shipping companies are renewing their deep-sea fleets, with capacity increase and greening as two common threads. The joint construction programmes are estimated at somethree hundred additional vessels on top of the current world fleet of some seven hundred.
This building boom is a response to the increasing demand for deep-sea transport mainly for China’s growing automotive industry. With larger, more energy-efficient ships, shipping companies kill two birds with one stone: they can carry more cars and let their customers score better points in legally mandated reductions in emissions from their logistics chains.
Big, bigger, biggest
Höegh Autoliners’ Aurora class for 9,100 cars will become a new world record. Meanwhile, Norwegian-Swedish Wallenius Wilhelmsen ordered the Shaper class with 9,300 seats, to be delivered from 2026. The Italian group Grimaldi ordered ships for 9,000 cars, the first of which will enter service in 2025.
This will eventually be surpassed by South Korean group Hyundai Glovis. That ordered six ro-ro vessels with a capacity for 10,800 cars in China in May.
