[Alberta's Child]

FWIW, there is some speculation that the newest generation of container ships (as well as any larger ones planned for the future) may be obsolete before they are put in service. They may never be utilized to the extent it was expected.

[stationkeeper]

Not sure what you mean by obsolete...........the problem with container ships of this size is not the panama canal since they don't use it anyway.
The biggest constraint on the largest container ships today is draft (water depth)...there is not a single East Coast USA port that can handle them at their max design draft, which requires about 52' of water depth....
they can hit southern california, most of the major line haul ports in europe and asia but not the U.S. East Coast.
this constraint drives all sorts of deployment and load factor decisions for the Carriers that operate these ships....that is why they are beating up all the major East Coast ports (N.Y/HAMPTON ROADS/CHARLESTON) to fix the problem through dredging to the required depths.....which is wildly expensive and has to clear a bunch of Environmental hurdles.