Brittany Ferries and US start-up Regent plan to develop a high-speed electric seaglider that would skim above the water to take passengers between France and Britain, the French company said on Wednesday. The project is based on a craft being developed by Boston-based Regent that could result in “50-150 passenger capacity sailing between the UK and France by 2028,” a statement said. Regent expects the first commercial passengers to travel on smaller electric craft by 2025, it added. Seagliders, sometimes called wing-in-ground effect vehicles, benefit from a cushion of “high-pressure air trapped between wings and the ground or water while flying at low altitude,” the ferry company explained. “Seagliders are therefore akin to a hovercraft with wings, rather than a skirt,” it said. Capable in theory of flying at up to 290 kilometres per hour (180mph), or six times faster than conventional ferries, the electric-powered craft cut emissions to essentially zero. A trip from Cherbourg, France, to Portsmouth in England is forecast to take 40 minutes. Currently, Brittany Ferries advertises high-speed service that takes three hours. “The craft rises on foils insulating passengers from...