The Thames service, famously free to passengers and drivers, has been operating since 1889 and carries around 20,000 vehicles and 2.6 million passengers a year with present Dundee-built vessels ERNEST BEVIN, JAMES NEWMAN and JOHN BURNS, all named after leading former London politicians, dating from 1963.
 
Normally two of the three are in weekday service with departures every nine minutes from either side and a single ship runs every 16 minutes at weekends, the service providing a vital alternative for lorries that are too high to  use the nearby Blackwall Tunnel.
 
The NES package consists of ultralight converters forming a DC-grid system with four battery packages, two on each side of the DC-bus for redundancy and for main propulsion there are water-cooled, high efficiency permanent magnet motors and four direct driven propellers.
 
© Shippax / Russell Plummer