071 LPD thread
- Thread starter sumdud
- Start date
Are these paid for by car makers like BYD?
Yes, BYD is paying for several, so are many others. I expect it to be quite a large fleet eventually. Just imagine how many cars and electric/hydrogen smart trucks China will export a year, it might approach a million a month if things continue.
These PCTC seem to be getting bigger and bigger with each order, right now they are around 200m long, but the biggest container ships are 399m.
China will also need to export just huge amounts of agricultural machinery too, and mining.
Brilliant, again, example of civil military fusion, BYD pays for PLAN ships, as all these ships are designed to accommodate the PLANs needs in war time, as I understand it.
Note that many of these PCTCs are for non-Chinese shipping lines, so I doubt they have been built to dual-use requirements.
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I've also got a figure of about 10,000 lane-metres for all the combat and support vehicles required for a medium (wheeled) brigade.
So 2 of the large PCTCs being built by Guangzhou should easily be able to accommodate this, even with the additional width of military vehicles.
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The equivalent requirement for an infantry brigade comes to 7500 lane-metres.
If I’m not wrong.
China Merchants Energy Shipping (CMES) placed 2 orders.
BYD Auto placed 8 orders until 2025.
COSCO placed 6 orders.
SAIC with their SAIC Anji placed 12 orders.
Even Chery Automobile building their own Shipyard in Weihai with help from Wuhu Shipyard to focus on building PCTCs Fleet for them.
While Guangzhou Yuanhai Car Carrier Transportation. Would have 24 PCTCs in their service by 2026, with 15 PCTCs for second half 2024
I also see from GSI :
4 from Ship Finance International Limited (SFL)
7 from H-Line Shipping
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But the issue with International routes is that a dual-use design will inherently be less efficient than the competition. Plus putting that many vehicles on a single, large unwieldy ship is risky.
There are already a lot of smaller RoRos in China already (see below) and you could probably estimate the total sealift capacity of the listed ships. Plus there are all the other RoRos elsewhere in China and Hong Kong.
andrewerickson.com/2023/03/cmsi-china-maritime-report-26-beyond-the-first-battle-overcoming-a-protracted-blockade-of-taiwan/
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