kashurst
Well-Known Member
10 years time they will be everywhere.
Do we now need an electric boat forum???
- Thread starter kashurst
- Start date
Bouba
Well-Known Member
We could have them now…but nobody chooses to
kashurst
Well-Known Member
They said that about Teslas. Look what happened. All the bright young things with too much money will be buying hydrofoils to look cool on the big US and European lakes. Then they will spread to estuary boaters, the Balearics, Turkish riviera etc
Candela are selling well - well for boat sales well. The TYDE boat caught my attention because it is over 13m long - thats a big boat.
Candela are selling well - well for boat sales well. The TYDE boat caught my attention because it is over 13m long - thats a big boat.
Fire99
Well-Known Member
(deleted)
Fire99
Well-Known Member
Really interesting to watch... Especially the realtime range and equivalent mpg using the most expensive public charger.
Fire99
Well-Known Member
But check out the details.. 43kts top speed = Great. Now look at the range.." 20 to 50 minutes of high speed action". Obviously I'd like to know what the reality is, as in is it closer to 20 minutes or 50 minutes but if in reality you're only going to be hooning around for 30-35 minutes at a time, get a petrol one!
The vague statement about the remaining time on the water being 5-10kts for a whole day of boating. Which is it? if it's 5kts on a sports day boat, that will be miserable. I'd say it's borderline irrelevant in that it's completely the wrong boat for pootling around at slow speed for hours.
A 23ft Fletcher is going to be a big ol lump to drag home to charge up and a 7kwh charger will take 18 hours to recharge.
If there suddenly appears rows of 'Tesla supercharger like' fast boat chargers at marinas then great but is that likely?
julians
Well-Known Member
Yep, currently electric sports boats are where electric cars were 15-20 years ago, terrible range, terrible charging infrastructure. I guess it'll all catch up over the next 20 years.
Fire99
Well-Known Member
I think that's probably the best conclusion. Now is not the time to be a 'pioneer' of the technology. Personally, I'll wait and see if marinas etc really take the EV route seriously or if much like my current marina, pretty much nothing has changed since it was built and there are not even mentions of interest in electric charging there. That said Bangor being Bangor does think it'll soon (by 2024.. cough!) have an entirely electric foiling ferry service for 150 passengers running to Belfast from the harbour. The little foiling test boat I have only seen charged from a diesel generator so I'm not holding my breath on that one. That sniffs more of profiting from grant money but vanishing in a sizzle of 3-phase!
Bouba
Well-Known Member
In all fairness....if we wait until all the marinas modernise first.....we will be waiting forever
Fire99
Well-Known Member
I'm not saying all. But it's madness to buy a product that relies on the infrastructure until the infrastructure is in place. You don't want to be investing in the 2024 Betamax project.
Bouba
Well-Known Member
I agree....but the best we can hope for is for marinas to react to a demand...not proact....have you ever tried using marina broadband
Fire99
Well-Known Member
Bangor marina broadband is marginally worse than writing your request on a letter and handing it to a pigeon to deliver!! But broadband is a very different issue as it's easy and quite cheap to find an alternative. You're still using the same tech but usually supplied by your own phone/router with your own contract.I agree....but the best we can hope for is for marinas to react to a demand...not proact....have you ever tried using marina broadband
Powering your boat is a very different issue. You have got to be insane to moor a boat (that in itself is vastly more expensive than its ICE siblings) in a marina that has no facilities to give it the ability to go anywhere, in the hope that they will rig up the infrastructure because of your boat. Our place can't even get the 2nd washing machine working or the showers hot.
Bouba
Well-Known Member
Your experience is not unique....marinas meet an inexhaustible demand...they don’t have much incentive to get anything right. Perhaps we should wait for a government to force them....wait that won’t happen either
Fire99
Well-Known Member
Perhaps. The issue with 'Boatbroke' (sorry Boatfolk) and the setup in Bangor is that it's council owned and managed by the aforementioned revenue collectors and 'infrastructure' always seems to be 'the other guy's' responsibility. We recently had self-service fuel pumps put in. Why? No idea.. No-one I know of wanted it and the only benefit is that the 'berthing master' (who man the marina 24/7) doesn't have to stroll down to fill you up. Meanwhile basic amenities remain broken. So anything forward thinking like expanding facilities into EV charging for say small electric boats, to me is a compete pipe-dream.
KevinV
Well-Known Member
I've kept quiet on this thread because it's in the motor boat forum and I'm a wafi, but two thoughts occur:
- Planing motorboats, especially large ones are (in the long history of human seafaring) a very recent thing. It wouldn't seem that odd to me if that turned out to be a blip - the last hoorah of wasteful fossil fuel driven collective madness. Electric propulsion is quite feasible already for displacement boats IF recharging can be sorted. My guess is that this transition would have to be led from the top of the sector making it desirable, as it has been with cars, so electric boats will have to do something that ICE boats can't, whether that be packaging, eco cred, quietness, range on solar or whatever.
- sailing boats with "auxiliary engine" used to be just that and would be good candidates for electric power if sufficient regeneration under sail is achievable (I'm working on this for my own little boat). The upsides for us are real - the lack of noise, simplicity of maintenance, reliability, not having the issues around getting /storing diesel, packaging (placement of the weight and bulk in particular). It could really work as the cost comes down, without needing charging infrastructure.
However, and it's a big however, that does not work for those who don't really sail much, and they are legion, so (diesel) generators will probably be commonplace, negating most of the benefit. Perhaps those motorsailers will simply move over to newly-made-sexy displacement motorboats?
Just my tuppence, I'm happy to be ignored
- Planing motorboats, especially large ones are (in the long history of human seafaring) a very recent thing. It wouldn't seem that odd to me if that turned out to be a blip - the last hoorah of wasteful fossil fuel driven collective madness. Electric propulsion is quite feasible already for displacement boats IF recharging can be sorted. My guess is that this transition would have to be led from the top of the sector making it desirable, as it has been with cars, so electric boats will have to do something that ICE boats can't, whether that be packaging, eco cred, quietness, range on solar or whatever.
- sailing boats with "auxiliary engine" used to be just that and would be good candidates for electric power if sufficient regeneration under sail is achievable (I'm working on this for my own little boat). The upsides for us are real - the lack of noise, simplicity of maintenance, reliability, not having the issues around getting /storing diesel, packaging (placement of the weight and bulk in particular). It could really work as the cost comes down, without needing charging infrastructure.
However, and it's a big however, that does not work for those who don't really sail much, and they are legion, so (diesel) generators will probably be commonplace, negating most of the benefit. Perhaps those motorsailers will simply move over to newly-made-sexy displacement motorboats?
Just my tuppence, I'm happy to be ignored
Fire99
Well-Known Member
I've kept quiet on this thread because it's in the motor boat forum and I'm a wafi, but two thoughts occur:
- Planing motorboats, especially large ones are (in the long history of human seafaring) a very recent thing. It wouldn't seem that odd to me if that turned out to be a blip - the last hoorah of wasteful fossil fuel driven collective madness. Electric propulsion is quite feasible already for displacement boats IF recharging can be sorted. My guess is that this transition would have to be led from the top of the sector making it desirable, as it has been with cars, so electric boats will have to do something that ICE boats can't, whether that be packaging, eco cred, quietness, range on solar or whatever.
- sailing boats with "auxiliary engine" used to be just that and would be good candidates for electric power if sufficient regeneration under sail is achievable (I'm working on this for my own little boat). The upsides for us are real - the lack of noise, simplicity of maintenance, reliability, not having the issues around getting /storing diesel, packaging (placement of the weight and bulk in particular). It could really work as the cost comes down, without needing charging infrastructure.
However, and it's a big however, that does not work for those who don't really sail much, and they are legion, so (diesel) generators will probably be commonplace, negating most of the benefit. Perhaps those motorsailers will simply move over to newly-made-sexy displacement motorboats?
Just my tuppence, I'm happy to be ignored
Interesting points. In my chunky ol Semi-Displacement MOBO which in reality means just over displacement speed most of the time and the odd run up an extra 3 or 4 knots when in a hurry or to get out of inclement weather, the concept of electric is fine other than the reality of making it work..
Good point about sailing boats. I spent near a decade a sailing boat owner, mixing with fellow 'raggies' (I say that in jest) and most had very little interest in the engine and I'm not sure I ever met one who like the sound of a sailing boat engine chugging away. And a good few seemed to resent the maintenance too so ditching the motor for a compact electric motor does make sense..Not to mention no diesel bug and other issues from FAME fuel. Once again if the total weight including the batteries isn't too high, range is good enough when chugging along at 5kts (I think we have to accept that a lot of sailing boats spend a loooot of time under engine power) and the ability to recharge is more than just a pipe-dream.
I think this could take very long time indeed...
Bouba
Well-Known Member
If boat design changed to include large flat roofs full of solar panels it could work…going on the principle that leisure boats are kept in hot places and only used once a week
Seastoke
Well-Known Member
We don’t like boats.
kashurst
Well-Known Member
If you want to get an idea of what is currently possible - overlarge, stupidly fast, wasteful SUVs aside, have a look at the Mercedes EQXX.
This is where EV car design should/hopefully be going. Light, extremely aerodynamic, has a touch of Aston Martin DB5/6 about and does 1000 km. Unfortunately the car manufacturers have to make what they know will currently sell to develop the technology and drive battery price down and performance up. We are getting there. Then electric boats will go proper distances.
Dino
Well-Known Member
Having spent 6 years project managing the roll out of the EV Charging Infrastructure in Ireland and subsequently London and Coventry, I have a fairly good idea of what would be required. Electric boats are certainly something that could work. I think there seems to be a bit of a move towards displacement speed cruising with some new boats now available with smaller or single engine options. The hybrid boats like Greenline do make a lot of sense but I can’t see battery powered boating being able to cater for fast coastal cruising. The battery size and weight will turn into a trade off.
EV’s work really well when you have a driveway and a means of charging at home each night at a slower pace. This type of charging usually meets over 90% of charging requirements. The problem is how do we accommodate this in a marina with limited availability to high power charging and often limited access to higher power grid connections. Maybe marinas will have to look at solar panels or alternative energy generation. You don’t really want a situation where all the boats are running generators in the marina at night to charge huge batteries.
Electric boating will work for certain scenarios where usage is low and/or distances travelled are low and at low speed.
But overall I think we are still 15-20 years away from mass adoption
EV’s work really well when you have a driveway and a means of charging at home each night at a slower pace. This type of charging usually meets over 90% of charging requirements. The problem is how do we accommodate this in a marina with limited availability to high power charging and often limited access to higher power grid connections. Maybe marinas will have to look at solar panels or alternative energy generation. You don’t really want a situation where all the boats are running generators in the marina at night to charge huge batteries.
Electric boating will work for certain scenarios where usage is low and/or distances travelled are low and at low speed.
But overall I think we are still 15-20 years away from mass adoption
