Tell Congress to support electric shipbuilding!

An all-electric bulk carrier ship, the Gezhouba, was launched from Yichang in the Hebei Province of China in October 2025, accelerating the electrification of inland shipping on the Yangtze River. The ship is nearly 130 meters long, has a maximum capacity of 13,000 tonnes, is powered by 24 MWh of lithium-ion batteries, and “self-parks” with automatic berthing. State-owned media reports that the Gezhouba has a range of 500 kilometers on a single charge and can be recharged with rapid battery swapping. At the time of its launch, it’s the world’s biggest-yet all-electric cargo ship!

The Gezhouba isn’t an isolated case. In July 2025, the Yujian 77, an all-electric cruise ship, set out from Xiamen Bay, and in December 2025 world-leading Chinese battery maker CATL announced that they were seriously moving into shipbuilding.

For context, in 2024 China accounted for 53.3% of all global commercial shipbuilding, with South Korea at 29.1%, Japan at 13.1%, and the United States at just 0.1%. China’s state-owned CSSC corporation built more commercial ships by tonnage in 2024 alone than the entire U.S. shipbuilding industry has built since the end of World War II.

As battery technology rapidly improves, electric motors are economically competitive in every established field of land travel, and they’re now starting to synergize with China’s preexisting leadership in shipbuilding. China is building a technologically and economically dominant position at the lead of humanity’s transportation manufacturing industries.

The dawn of the Battery Age could have been an opportunity for America to lead the world again — many key battery chemistries were invented in America, and the nation has a longstanding reputation of attracting the best talent in the world. But the White House keeps attacking America’s innovation-supporting culture and industries. The disastrous OBBBA budget canceled many key supports for battery industries. The president’s legally dubious tariffs are deindustrializing America, with investments rolled back and layoffs multiplying. Lawless deportations target and deter scientists.

Some U.S. battery companies are managing to survive, often with support at the state level, but what it amounts to is that America is slowing down and self-harming while China keeps speeding up. It’s as if we had responded to the USSR’s Sputnik launch by destroying our own rocketry programs. Congress must step in to reclaim their constitutionally granted power of the purse and forcibly restore a baseline level of sanity for American clean manufacturing.

Tell Congress to support electric shipbuilding!