[Drdrdrq]

What I'm waiting for is for foils to become useful. It doesn't make sense to (only) replace energy source, drag should be minimized too. Admittedly it will take a long time for technology to be ready for these huge ships though.

[krschultz]

Hydrofoils are generally higher drag at low speed, they only make sense when you want to go faster than displacement speed. That doesn't make sense for most cargo, anything time sensitive is going by air.

[LeifCarrotson]

There is a large gap in price and performance between 15-knot container ships and 500-knot aircraft. The former costs $0.1 per ton and takes months (7+37+7 day cargo transit), the later costs $5 per ton and does it in less than a day.

There are already lots of hydrofoil passenger ferries where passengers pay a lot less than a plane ticket but more than a slow monohull ferry ticket to get to a destination a bit more quickly.

On land, you might send something across the country at 60 mph on a truck for $0.4 per ton if you don't want to wait for rail or pay for air, but as far as I know, no such middle ground exists for ocean freight.

There are certainly customers who can't afford and don't need next-day air, but would pay more to get components in perhaps 5 days (60 mph hydrofoil, 6000 mile Pacific crossing, plus a day to load/unload) instead of 5-8 weeks, if there was a business that catered to that.

[krschultz]

I see what you're saying, and I think that's why more cargo is moving by rail in Asia. If it was sold as a premium service it might work, but I have no idea how big that market really is when you are talking about crossing whole oceans.

[djrogers]

Foils simply won’t work at speeds that cargo ships travel at.