The world’s first autonomous cargo ship is planned to be launched in 2018, as a company in Norway said Saturday that it has committed to build and deploy one.

Two companies, Yara International ASA and Kongsberg Gruppen, have joined forces to build the “Yara Birkeland,” a container vessel that will cart fertilizer on a 37-mile route from a production facility to a port in Norway. The vessel will have a capacity of 150 containers and will be electrically powered, meaning that it will also produce zero emissions.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the vessel will use the Global Positioning System, radar, cameras and sensors to navigate itself around other boat traffic and dock on its own. But won’t come cheaply. The price tag of $25 million is said to be around three times the price of a traditional container vessel of the same size. The owners of the vessel argue that the upfront cost will be outweighed over time by reduced running costs of up to 90 percent because of lower fuel costs and no need to employ a crew to operate the ship — eventually.

Like self-driving vehicles before it, the autonomous cargo ship will not be fully autonomous at launch, with an initial testing stage that includes traditional staff overseeing the ship in a dedicated cargo container. A second stage will see the cargo container moved to land with pilots overseeing the ship in a similar fashion to that of a drone operator. Around 2020, according to the plan, the technology will be trusted enough to operate the vessel by itself.

The Yara Birkeland may be the first autonomous ship in commercial service next year, but rival ship builders are not that far behind. U.K. engineering giant Rolls-Royce Ltd. is planning to deploy autonomous ships by 2020 as well.

The deployment of the technology, particularly in international waters, still faces several challenges. The immediate one is that International Maritime Organization regulations governing autonomous shipping likely won’t be in place until 2020 at the earliest.

The other challenges include what happens to a crewless ship if it breaks down or is attacked by pirates, the latter still a serious worldwide issue even if many people might think it’s a thing of the past. The World Shipping Council reports that there were 439 pirate attacks and 45 merchant vessels hijacked worldwide in 2011 alone.

Image: Yara International ASA