San Francisco may have beaten us to the punch with the world\u2019s first hydrogen-powered ferry, but New York isn\u2019t about to sit dockside. A sleek new vessel could soon be slicing through the East River without belching out diesel fumes\u2014or rattling your eardrums.<\/p>\n
RECOMMENDED: Queens might finally be getting ferry service to LaGuardia Airport and Citi Field<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Switch Maritime, the company behind California\u2019s pioneering Sea Change ferry, has landed $2 million from New York State to develop a bigger, faster hydrogen boat designed for Gotham waters, reports Canary Media<\/a>. The 150-passenger vessel is slated to debut around 2028 for a yearlong demo period, during which it\u2019ll prove whether clean marine transit can work at scale in a city where ferries haul thousands of commuters and tourists every day.<\/p>\n Instead of burning diesel, the ferry runs on hydrogen fuel cells that generate electricity to power the motors. The only byproducts are water vapor and a little heat, which means no carbon dioxide, no nitrogen oxide and no lung-searing exhaust hanging over the harbor. It\u2019s the same basic tech powering some zero-emission buses and trucks, only this time, it floats.<\/p>\n The stakes are high. More than 600 ferries crisscross U.S. waterways and nearly all of them still guzzle diesel. New York\u2019s own fleet has started to go greener, with a $33 million hybrid-electric boat already in service, but hydrogen could be the game changer for longer routes where batteries alone can\u2019t cut it.<\/p>\n Of course, there are wrinkles. The Sea Change had occasional hiccups in San Francisco, mostly due to the tricky business of sourcing fuel. Right now, there\u2019s no hydrogen supply chain for the maritime sector in the U.S., which means New York\u2019s experiment will depend on building that infrastructure alongside the vessel itself. Switch says it\u2019s lining up potential \u201cgreen hydrogen\u201d suppliers (produced from renewable energy), but costs remain much steeper than diesel.<\/p>\n