There are a few electric ships out there powered by batteries. They have a really short range though and of course a lot smaller than what Maersk needs.
I'm guessing battery cost rather than weight is the main issue here. The Chinese ship is powered by the equivalent of about 24 teslas apparently for a whopping range of 50 miles. Compared to the overal weight of these ships, I could imagine extended range with more batteries would be feasible. I imagine the capital expense is the bottleneck here; not the weight. But it makes a lot of sense for shorter routes.
Having solar and wind to supplement energy might help extend their range by a meaningful percentage but probably not enough to make it worth bothering since you in any case have to recharge frequently; which is probably comparatively cheap (compared to buying fuel)
Wind powered sail drones already exist as well: https://www.saildrone.com/ These are tiny of course but they can be out there for months by themselves. You could imagine a scaled versions of these transporting cargo. With no fuel cost and no staffing cost, you can get economies of scale by simply having more of them rather than bigger ones.
The reason big ships are popular today is that they minimize staff and fuel cost. Big ships require a lot of power but they are overall more cost effective per ton of load than smaller ones. If you take people and fuel cost out of the equation, you can start thinking about different solutions.
A few examples of electrical ships:
https://phys.org/news/2017-05-norway-self-sailing-electric-c...
https://electrek.co/2017/12/04/all-electric-cargo-ship-batte...
I'm guessing battery cost rather than weight is the main issue here. The Chinese ship is powered by the equivalent of about 24 teslas apparently for a whopping range of 50 miles. Compared to the overal weight of these ships, I could imagine extended range with more batteries would be feasible. I imagine the capital expense is the bottleneck here; not the weight. But it makes a lot of sense for shorter routes.
Having solar and wind to supplement energy might help extend their range by a meaningful percentage but probably not enough to make it worth bothering since you in any case have to recharge frequently; which is probably comparatively cheap (compared to buying fuel)
Wind powered sail drones already exist as well: https://www.saildrone.com/ These are tiny of course but they can be out there for months by themselves. You could imagine a scaled versions of these transporting cargo. With no fuel cost and no staffing cost, you can get economies of scale by simply having more of them rather than bigger ones.
The reason big ships are popular today is that they minimize staff and fuel cost. Big ships require a lot of power but they are overall more cost effective per ton of load than smaller ones. If you take people and fuel cost out of the equation, you can start thinking about different solutions.