Electric Boats

[gordmac]

Rallycross is going electric. Races are very short so a huge battery isn't needed. Unless there is a huge, game changing, invention of a battery that gets close to half the energy density of diesel, anyone who wants to go a reasonable distance at a reasonable speed isn't going to shift from fossil fuels.

 

[westernman]

Rallycross is going electric. Races are very short so a huge battery isn't needed. Unless there is a huge, game changing, invention of a battery that gets close to half the energy density of diesel, anyone who wants to go a reasonable distance at a reasonable speed isn't going to shift from fossil fuels.

They might shift to Ammonia made from green electricity.

The case for two-stroke ammonia engines

"Green" ammonia is the key to meeting the twin challenges of the 21st century. | Offerings | Siemens Energy United Kingdom

 

[gordmac]

Fossil fuels may be replaced by greener ones, ammonia as you say, or synthetic hydrocarbons. They have the potential to remove carbon from the atmosphere.

 

[Wing Mark]

In a small car, you would probably do less than 4000 miles per year
On a small car that's probably less than £300 per year on fuel.
My point is the the depreciation on an electric car would be more than that alone.
New Leafs are well over £20,000 - I was in the Nissan showroom yesterday.
Factor that kind of depreciation in and the electric car makes no sense at all.

New cars make no sense at all to me.
The average car in the Uk does something like 7k miles PA.
Some do more, some do less.
If you've got a 15 mile each way commute, that's about 7k miles.
If you have a few habitual local journeys, easy to clock up another 3k.

I guess for a lot of people, the question is about the difference in lease costs between a horrid little electric car and a horrid little petrol car?
Personally I expect to change my car next year, I think I have one more IC car ahead of me.

 

[Scarron]

2023 Stark VARG Electric Motocross Bike First Look

looks like they have developed a competitive moto x e bike capable of beating petrol .
Someone will develop e boats at some point in the future for sure

That’s interesting and looks pretty quick, but, a) it needs a clutch in the drive train to give proper control, and b) with a fixed battery and only a max of 40 mins duration you will need to own at least 3 of them to compete at your average race meeting of 3x 20 minute heats and a final. Oh and although it’s nice and quiet, the pits will be pretty raucous with loads of people running big diesel gennies to top up between races!

 

[westernman]

To come back to the OP, there are two environmental impacts burning fossil fuels have.

1) The CO2 emissions.
Using EV boats/vehicles will reduce this a bit if the origin of electricity is renewables. However a significant percentage of this will just be displaced to the fossil fuel burning power stations

2) Local particulate emissions.
Obviously for boating this is largely irrelevant - except for large ships idling in port. They can be (and in many cases are being) hooked up to shore power.

Also, it is interesting to note that the biggest problem for local particulate emissions does not come from traffic (diesel cars, trucks, etc), but from wood burning stoves. Yes, hardly anyone uses them, but they cause by far the more dangerous particulate emissions than traffic.

Wood burners cause nearly half of urban air pollution cancer risk – study

 

[Bigplumbs]

New cars make no sense at all to me.
The average car in the Uk does something like 7k miles PA.
Some do more, some do less.
If you've got a 15 mile each way commute, that's about 7k miles.
If you have a few habitual local journeys, easy to clock up another 3k.

I guess for a lot of people, the question is about the difference in lease costs between a horrid little electric car and a horrid little petrol car?
Personally I expect to change my car next year, I think I have one more IC car ahead of me.

Lease ..... Lease.... I have never leased a car in my life and never intend to

 

[Hurricane]

Lease ..... Lease.... I have never leased a car in my life and never intend to

Agreed 100%
The other concept I have is buy new or nearly new and NEVER sell.
Well, we have to sometime though.
Our Landcruiser is now in its 22nd year.
Against our better judgement but we have ordered a new replacement car - with a diesel engine!!

 

[westernman]

Lease ..... Lease.... I have never leased a car in my life and never intend to

Much better is to never buy your own car but let some one else provide you with the new car of your choice - including colour, leather, gadgets etc, at their expense, including the insurance, petrol/diesel, maintenance and the rental car during maintance or workshop visits.

 

[Wing Mark]

Agreed 100%
The other concept I have is buy new or nearly new and NEVER sell.
Well, we have to sometime though.
Our Landcruiser is now in its 22nd year.
Against our better judgement but we have ordered a new replacement car - with a diesel engine!!

I've owned a motorbike for a similar length of time, but I've never quite got to grips with the idea of paying lots of cash for a new car, if you're prepared to be driving a ten year old banger in ten years time.
Why not cut to the chase, buy a banger now and spend the extra on a bigger boat?

Last time I looked at the numbers, I thought that people who buy cars new for cash get ripped off.
The price of a buying new car ought to be less than the price of having leaseco buy it and rent it to you, but the reality is that the prices are what the market will bear.

 

[Hurricane]

I've owned a motorbike for a similar length of time, but I've never quite got to grips with the idea of paying lots of cash for a new car, if you're prepared to be driving a ten year old banger in ten years time.
Why not cut to the chase, buy a banger now and spend the extra on a bigger boat?

No - I use the same logic on the boat - bought new - never sold.

I've owned a motorbike for a similar length of time, but I've never quite got to grips with the idea of paying lots of cash for a new car, if you're prepared to be driving a ten year old banger in ten years time.
Why not cut to the chase, buy a banger now and spend the extra on a bigger boat?

That logic is flawed - you will eventually be paying to use someone else's money.
Use your own money - leasing is a form of borrowing.

 

[Seastoke]

In a small car, you would probably do less than 4000 miles per year
On a small car that's probably less than £300 per year on fuel.
My point is the the depreciation on an electric car would be more than that alone.
New Leafs are well over £20,000 - I was in the Nissan showroom yesterday.
Factor that kind of depreciation in and the electric car makes no sense at all.

I hope you were in disguise and not bring shame on the forum.

 

[Hurricane]

I hope you were in disguise and not bring shame on the forum.

Just taking my daughter's car in for a service!!
Not tempted I'm afraid.

 

[Whippersnapper]

Sorry I haven’t got time to read through the entire thread. My comment is that the energy density of diesel is about 100x more than Li-ion batteries. When you factor in the better efficiency of electric motors you end up with a difference of around 25x. So if your boat currently has a 1,000 liter fuel tank then you would need getting on for 25 tonnes of batteries to give the boat the same performance envelope as you enjoy today (although not in reality as your boat wouldn’t go so well with an additional 25 tonnes on board I’m guessing).

For now and probably for quite some time given the very shallow improvement in battery energy density since the 1990s electric boats will only make sense for slow displacement vessels with low range, or foil or planing cats that have short routes like some ferries. The technology is totally impractical for the vast majority of leisure boating.

 

[Mistroma]

Sorry I haven’t got time to read through the entire thread. My comment is that the energy density of diesel is about 100x more than Li-ion batteries. When you factor in the better efficiency of electric motors you end up with a difference of around 25x. So if your boat currently has a 1,000 liter fuel tank then you would need getting on for 25 tonnes of batteries to give the boat the same performance envelope as you enjoy today (although not in reality as your boat wouldn’t go so well with an additional 25 tonnes on board I’m guessing).

For now and probably for quite some time given the very shallow improvement in battery energy density since the 1990s electric boats will only make sense for slow displacement vessels with low range, or foil or planing cats that have short routes like some ferries. The technology is totally impractical for the vast majority of leisure boating.

If you read #30 you will see that I tried to keep things simple (probably failed) by using estimated power usage on my own Yanmar vs. figures quoted for a Tesla powerwall.

I came up with a factor of around 22 and think someone else came up with about 25 by another route. This agrees with your final factor of around 25.

I compared a 125kg 13.5kWh Tesla powerwall with approx. 147 litres diesel, weighing 125kg. It would appear to indicate that I'd need 25 Powerwalls to get the same range as 147 litres of diesel.

The powerwalls would "only" weigh 21.25 tonnes if I'd used a 1,000 litre tank and a factor of 25. I suspect you came up with 25 tonnes by simplifying and using an SG of 1 for diesel instead of 0.85. Still results in a small boat requiring a periscope as a useful add-on.

It would seem that calculations used in this thread all give very similar results regarding issues with range on batteries.

 

[John100156]

It's blatantly obvious, any A-level or first year degree physics or chemistry student could do the maths with regard to energy stored in different fuel sources, it seems ignoring many variables such as E-motor/ICE combustion losses/efficiencies, whole life cycle costs, diminishing fuel availability and inevitably escalating cost, maintenance (yes I understand PV and battery replacement) and the like.

As has been said many times in my and many other posts, the point is not the amount of stored energy in the fuel, it is IMHO a diminishing, polluting resource (yes I am aware of battery components) so we do need to focus on future renewable sources and higher E-energy storage capacity (hence numerous labs concentrating on this around the world) and not bury our heads in the sand (or below it, black gold) we need to be encouraging the development of EB's IMO, not just sticking to old (albeit undoubtedly proven) technologies, or we will be left behind.

Once again, we are not there yet - but I hope I see the day where a decent size EB leisure boat will be built, perhaps including a small hydrogen powered generator, electric motors, PV and higher-capacity lighter and physically smaller batteries and/or fuel cells who knows. It will have to happen if later generations want to enjoy what we have for many years! Surely we should all be positive and encouraging this?

 

[westernman]

It's blatantly obvious, any A-level or first year degree physics or chemistry student could do the maths with regard to energy stored in different fuel sources, it seems ignoring many variables such as E-motor/ICE combustion losses/efficiencies, whole life cycle costs, escalating fuel availability and prices, and maintenance (yes I understand PV and battery replacement) and the like.

As has been said many times in my and many other posts, the point is not the amount of stored energy in the fuel, it is IMHO a diminishing, polluting resource (yes I am aware of battery components) so we do need to focus on future renewable sources and higher E-energy storage capacity (hence numerous labs concentrating on this around the world) and not bury our heads in the sand (or below it, black gold) we need to be encouraging the development of EB's IMO, not just sticking to old (albeit undoubtedly proven) technologies, or we will be left behind.

Once again, we are not there yet - but I hope I see the day where a decent size EB leisure boat will be built, perhaps including a small hydrogen powered generator, electric motors, PV and higher-capacity lighter and physically smaller batteries and/or fuel cells who knows. It will have to happen if later generations want to enjoy what we have for many years! Surely we should all be positive and encouraging this?

You never know - but may be wind powered boats will catch on.

 

[vas]

It's blatantly obvious, any A-level or first year degree physics or chemistry student could do the maths with regard to energy stored in different fuel sources, it seems ignoring many variables such as E-motor/ICE combustion losses/efficiencies, whole life cycle costs, diminishing fuel availability and inevitably escalating cost, maintenance (yes I understand PV and battery replacement) and the like.

As has been said many times in my and many other posts, the point is not the amount of stored energy in the fuel, it is IMHO a diminishing, polluting resource (yes I am aware of battery components) so we do need to focus on future renewable sources and higher E-energy storage capacity (hence numerous labs concentrating on this around the world) and not bury our heads in the sand (or below it, black gold) we need to be encouraging the development of EB's IMO, not just sticking to old (albeit undoubtedly proven) technologies, or we will be left behind.

Once again, we are not there yet - but I hope I see the day where a decent size EB leisure boat will be built, perhaps including a small hydrogen powered generator, electric motors, PV and higher-capacity lighter and physically smaller batteries and/or fuel cells who knows. It will have to happen if later generations want to enjoy what we have for many years! Surely we should all be positive and encouraging this?

as noted above the solution has been here even before motorboats.
Show us the direction liners/freightship are going and we can discuss it. EV are v.different to even compare things.
Hydrogen doesn't seem to be the solution, hopefully something else will come.
Hiding behind our finger about how much boats or EVs pollute is what I cannot stand, get a balanced well thought approach that semi intelligent ppl can appreciate and back up is what we need.
Looks like we are quite far away from that, so don't see any reason to follow half baked extremely expensive "solutions"

 

[John100156]

Liners/freightship a completely different matter, surely we are considering arguments for E-leisure boats?

We may be closer than you might think, or perhaps those investing many £ms currently in this field of research, and all the academics involved, are clearly not intelligent enough!

 

[vas]

Liners/freightship a completely different matter, surely we are considering arguments for E-leisure boats?

We may be closer than you might think, or perhaps those investing many £ms currently in this field of research, and all the academics involved, are clearly not intelligent enough!

surely liners are different to leisure boats, don't see much action on the liners and that's my concern. If the leisure boating solution is extortionately priced to justify viability, I'll move on to wind power (as I guess many would!)

fwiw I'm also an academic, my field is spatial representations and VR working on that for the last 30yrs. Serves me right and pays the bills (just!) All these news about new developments are well known to all fields, fe VR comes up every 5-6yrs as the new best thing since sliced bread and how it's going to wipe everything out and be the end of all comms/social/you name it. Same crap again that mr FB decided to change FB to MV or whatever. Bet you we'll be here in five yrs discussing how important x tech is and how close it's to world domination.
I'm deeply pessimist (OK, realist) and sincerely hope I'm horribly wrong

till that day my boat will be diesel fuelled, and my cars petrol unless I get a decent deal to a s/h EV for city commuting which doesn't seem to be the case down here at least.
Will be installing 5kW+ solar in my house roof in 2022 though if the f* idiots of the planning/archaeology dept allow me!