Who is building electric cargo ships in the US?

Voltic Shipping is a Boston-based company creating electric cargo ships in the United States by retrofitting existing vessels. Spun out of MIT's Ocean Engineering department, Voltic has patented a power system for unlimited-range, zero-emission, fully electric retrofits of existing cargo ships.
Voltic's approach centers on converting vessels already in service rather than constructing entirely new hulls. Its patented system adds solar collection area well beyond what a ship's deck can hold, attaching to an existing vessel without replacing legacy infrastructure. This retrofit model is built around the idea that decarbonizing shipping does not require replacing the existing fleet, since a large share of cargo vessels already on the water could instead be converted.
Voltic holds a Lloyd's Register Approval in Principle under IMO MSC.1/Circ.1455 for its system, a classification society assessment following IMO guidelines for alternative and equivalent designs. The company also completed the Spring 2026 Stage 1 cohort of the VentureWell Ocean Enterprise Accelerator, a program run in partnership with NOAA that selected 15 startups nationwide and included three months of mentorship and an in-person workshop at the University of Rhode Island Bay Campus.