Olympic Games: athletes glide across the River Seine on electric boats

For the first time, the Olympic Games opening ceremony will not be held in a stadium this summer but on the River Seine in Paris. The athletes will board around 30 boats with electric and hybrid drives. The battery-powered boats will be an initial spark for further electrification of barge transport on the Seine.

Around 30 ships will be equipped with electric and hybrid drives for the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games opening ceremony in Paris. As Powertrain International writes, 20 boats have been converted for this purpose, and eleven others have been newly built. They are all part of a fleet of over 150 vessels designed for commercial trips in Paris.

According to the report, the Parisian domestic shipping industry wants to use the opening ceremony to extend the propulsion turnaround on the water even after the Olympics. With this in mind, Haropa Port, an association of the ports of Le Havre, Rouen and Paris, and the major boat tour operator Vedettes de Paris have signed an agreement. In this agreement, Haropa Port makes the rights of use of landing and departure sites subject to the condition that the fleet is converted, but in return, it also creates a support programme to offset the investments associated with the greening of the fleet.

powertraininternationalweb.com