Future Electric Boats
 

The new Candela C-8 model has an improved version of its hydrofoiling technology that cuts energy consumption by 80% compared to conventional boats.

The new C-8 is taking the technology to another level while making the boat with the most comfort and bringing that to mass production.

The cost of driving a Candela C-8 is 95% lower than for regular gas powered boats. No winterizing and 3,000 hours with no maintenance sounds good too.


https://cleantechnica.com/2022/02/21...lectric-boats/

Too rich for my blood! $$$$$

Looks awesome! If this repeats the electric car pricing story, they'll be plenty on the lake in just a few years:)

Very cool boat! This platform will end up succeeding from multiple manufacturers in the near future I think. There will be a market for quiet, non-emitting boats that are still quite capable, not to mention the cool factor. "Hold on 1 second, I'm retracting my foils." :)

I do think they still need to improve range. 57 mile range is fine for a boat on Winni, but they can't tap into a cruising market until they get range up over 100 miles. It's not like there will be charging stations you can stop at, though maybe a 110v charger on board will allow for extending range when you dock somewhere with an outlet handy.

It’ll take time to get this right.
It’s hilariously audacious of them to cite low costs…twice, completely ignoring that it costs 3x more than a boat with ICE. It is in no way cheaper.

When we can get 150 mile range, 50 knots and within 20-30% the cost of alternatives, we’ll have something.

Cars are a lot further along, but that’s always the case.
Cars lost carbs en masse in what? 87? 88?
It was the early to mid 2000s before most boats had fuel injection.

The stats will improve and in my lifetime I’ll probably have an electric boat.

I think cars lost carbs a bit earlier - around 81 to 84ish, but your point is a good one.

Yes, if they can improve the specs some on these EV boats, I'm in on one too.

I am hopeful--I love my little Torqueedo and I'd buy a bowrider today even at a $20-30K premium. But this is tougher than most car to boat transitions. The big issue is the battery life vs weight--the surface friction against water is much higher than wheels on pavement and the batteries are damn heavy

I'm all for electric and, by God, a quieter lake. But I will ask...what about the boating experience itself? Feeling the water, being one with the water, getting wet, dealing with the unexpected, etc. I know I'm getting a bit poetic, but I wonder if riding one of these hydrofoils will feel more like an unexciting drive down a paved highway in the lake.

To me the foil would be awesome. I'm not going to pine away wishing for the good old days when I got the &#$@ kicked out of me by waves and wakes.

Kind of like why buy a deep v hull that is decent in chop when you can just go with a flatbottom and pound the daylights out of everyone on board. I'd take the better ride.

Electric boats
 

I'd suggest that the carbs vs injection % comparison may be off with many many diesel boats compared to relatively few diesel cars.

In any event, battery technology will improve with related improvements in weight ratios. The torque of an electric motor added to new, more efficient propellers will surely make for some great performance improvements.

Cars don't always lead the way. Autopilot integrated to electronic nav systems gives you driverless boats already, with collision avoidance systems too.

Nautique, Mastercraft, Supra, Malibu, Tigue, Moomba, Regal, Centurion...
 

With the heavy battery, look for more "efficient" surfing with Wake-Maker boats. :rolleye2:

New Law
 

If you want an electric boat or car there should be a law that the only way to recharge it is from a GREEN charger that gets its electricity from wind, solar or some other form of green energy… why be a hypocrite?:eek::eek::D

Dan

Very good point Dan!

Buying an electric car isn't just about being green, it's about freeing yourself from buying gas and the maintenance that goes along with gas vehicles.
I haven't bought one yet, but the thought of filling up at home while I'm sleeping and never having to visit a gas station again is an attractive alternative.
I understand they are not for everyone but I can see one in my future. Most families around here have more than one vehicle so having one EV for local driving could be a great option.

5 minutes at a gas station gets me a week's worth of driving or a few days of boating. No competition which I'd choose.

I agree with Dan—until these machines are actually green (and can last as long as I need them and be reasonably priced—including the initial outlay required), I'll be running with dino juice.

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I wouldn't assume everyone who buys an electric car buys it to be green.

I bought an electric car because it is one of the fastest production cars ever made. I could not care less about it being green or not. It is100% American engineered/innovated, built in the USA, by none union works. It is also nice to never have to do any maintenance, other than rotate and change tires, no oil changes, the brake pads effectively last forever.

After I got it I realized how many features it has that literally have nothing to do with being electric, gas, and diesel cars should have a ton of the features it has, why they don't is annoying and when I get in my diesel SUV it feels very dated.

Another thing I don't think people understand is you only ever charge at your home (I didn't notice any change in my electric bill). So you don't ever have to waste time at a gas station. You can wake up to a full tank every day. It is nice to know you can use the charging network but I have literally only used it once just to test it out. You can charge it for around 8 bucks at a supercharger in about 10 minutes but much less if you are just trying to get to your destination.

As far as the battery tech just not being there, I am not sure what more it needs to do. I do think the public does need some battery education. For example Everyone looks at range and what they should be looking at is effective range. Some batteries like to only be charged to 80% daily while other like 100%. Oddly this results in things like the tesla model y extended range having less of an effective range than the cheaper model that has different batteries that like to be charged to 100% every day. There are things like that, that people do not understand.

Again I don't care about it being green, however, there is a ton of bad info out there.

I was an auto mechanic for 50 years and I can assure you, there is nothing clean about fossil fueled cars and trucks.
I contributed 50000 dirty oil filters to landfills in my career and I was only one small time mechanic, not to mention all the other greasy, grimy parts I threw away in my 50 year career.
I came home every day smelling of oil and gas with hands I could never get completely clean.
I'm surprised I'm still alive after all the chemicals I used over the years and all the carbon monoxide I was breathing in over the years.

Oh, I agree for sure, but—as best I know it—the process for mining to produce the batteries and solar materials connected to most electricity being produced by fossil fuels makes the discussion much more complex.

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Again I don't care about the green stuff but...
Most of the mining would take place even without electric cars and boats. However despite what people would have you believe lithium for example is actually very abundant even here in the USA and companies are working on better extraction methods. This would be great for USA gdp. Even with that said people read Facebook posts about mining like it requires x amount of pounds of over burden removed etc to make one pound of lithium. I always laugh because moving that many tons of dirt for mining equipment is litterly nothing. I was a dirt dummy a long time ago 😂

With all that said eventually mining for these materials will become very limited. The batteries are essential pure ore. After they hit there useable life as a car battery they can be used in energy storage and then recycled. They are nearly 100% recyclable contrary to Facebook posts. What would you rather go mining out of dirt or have already refined ore sitting in a nice box for you. The metals don't go bad they are all still in there. Eventually end of life batterys will be big business and trade like a commodity.

Lithium and other elements can be ''mined'' through evaporative towers.

The point of going electric is the broadening of the choices; and more efficiently use our power grid.
Every energy source can be turned into electricity... but not diesel or gasoline.

NH's electric generation is about 60% nuclear, 6% biomass, 6% all other non-carbon sources, and the remainder is mostly natural gas.

Because of pipeline constrictions, I believe that we import all of our gasoline by ship... and now have some LNG shipping also. The NE power grid goes from base to peak... and thus has some capacity in off-peak periods to supply more to our State/area. Using that existing capacity is what the government is attempting to do.

It is very wasteful to have capacity that must be paid for that goes unused.

If they really were concerned with going green... they would reduce energy usage... which would most likely be a sailboat or rowboat.

That's where government regulations come into the discussion, but we all know how people don't like government regulations. Every car company and battery maker needs to be forced into recycling their products, we know they won't do it voluntarily!
Also new solid state battery development will reduce the need for lithium and create better and safer batteries.
It's a process, it took over 100 years to perfect the fossil fuel burning vehicle.
With the technology we have today it won't take nearly as long.

Great points. I would also add almost all that power is created here using American resources. Gas and diesel often times is coming from over seas and is not in Americas interest.

When we talk about how environmentally friendly electric vehicles are we told to forget the massive amount of energy that goes into mining and refining the raw materials that go into, and the pollution created by producing the batteries. I read a report a while ago (sorry, can’t find it now and have no way to vet it) that stated that when you look at the overall picture there really isn’t that great a difference between EVs and ICE vehicles.


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Most reports put EVs making up for the extra mining they require (by today's standards) at around 15k to 25k miles after that factoring in mining and all resources it takes to power them, they are better than gas.

Even if everything else were equal. For example they litterly were burning gas, they are 90% efficient vs 20 for gas.

Most of the articles I've read had a political slant to them, one way or the other.
Being in the automotive industry as long as I had been, I can attest to the negative environmental impact of fossil fuel vehicles.
As far as EV's go, I have no first-hand knowledge, only what I read about it.
I also owned a Mobil Gas station for 13 years and I can attest to how corrupt and manipulative the oil companies can be. So I'm all in for reducing our dependency on oil!

I'm sure the supply chain impacts are too complex on both the petrol and electric side of the fence for anyone to truly calculate. Tons of plusses and minuses for both. But don't we all agree that we must eventually move past fossil fuels to electric...or some other solution? Electric technology will incrementally improve over time and then one day, probably sooner than you think, it'll be clear that electric is the better alternative.

As has been discussed here above, for some reason the subject has become a political football. If you peel away the politics, and I want to say I think everyone on this thread has been great about giving opinions and facts and points of view without making it political, it really isn't all that complex a problem, can be understood with some facts and research. What you say is what I believe, that even given the problem of lithium mining, but also given that I believe solutions to that will be coming on line, that making a significant amount of fossil fuel use go away with electric cars is one of the largest impacts on emissions and climate change that is available to us.

Interestingly, a major deposit of lithium ore has been found in Maine.

https://www.mainepublic.org/2021-10-...-could-be-hard

Since I've been reading you for years, I know you're a smart guy and teasing. But for those who might think you are serious...

There's nothing hypocritical about charging an electric boat with whatever juice NHEC is sending. Nobody worth listening to has ever said electric boats or cars are perfect for the environment. But they are better for the environment. On cars, the improvement is about 2/3's vs gas.

As I've posted in the past, in addition to environmental benefits, EVs are a lot of fun. Instantaneous torque, so they leap off the line--family sedans that are as quick as Porsches costing 3-4X

We've been net exporters for quite awhile now.

NH... and NE... have issues.

The negative outcome of the Northern Pass threw cold water on the build out and upgrade of new transmission and pipelines.

Small generators are able to squeeze into the grid without the upgrades... basically due to the amount of generation that is sited; but that places more emphasis on things like solar.

The batteries, and maybe someday hydrogen, allow narrowing of the gap from base to peak.