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Electric boats at tech show: Pitched as cleaner and quieter

These early electric boat models are expensive, heavy and could cause serious “range anxiety.”

Flying cars and self-driving vehicles always get attention at the CES gadget show in Las Vegas, but this year electric recreational boats are making bigger waves.

Swedish company Candela on unveiled a 28-foot electric-powered hydrofoil speedboat that can cruise for more than two hours at 20 knots, or about 35 kilometres per hour. California startup Navier tried to outdo its Scandinavian rival by bringing an electric hydrofoil that’s a little bit longer, though Candela is further along in getting its products to customers.

The recreational motorboat conglomerate Brunswick Corp. also tried to make a splash by showing off its latest electric outboard motor — an emerging segment of its mostly gas-powered fleet.

Why electric?

A chief reason is environmental, as well as to save on rising fuel costs. But electric-powered boats — particularly with the sleek foiling designs that lift the hull above the water’s surface at higher speeds — can also offer a smoother and quieter ride.

“You can have a wine glass and it does not spill,” Navier CEO Sampriti Bhattacharyya told the Associated Press last month. “And it’s quiet, extremely quiet. You can have a conversation, unlike on a gas boat.”

When can you get one?

Candela CEO Gustav Hasselskog said his company has already sold and manufactured 150 of its new C-8 model. The Stockholm-based startup has been scaling up its workforce from 60 employees a year ago to about 400 later this year as it prepares to ramp up production.

But with a $400,000 US price tag, neither the C-8 nor Navier’s N30 is aiming to replace the aluminum boat used to fish on the lake. They’ve been described as Teslas of the sea, with hopes that what starts off as a luxury vehicle could eventually help transform the marine industry.

“They tend to be entrepreneurs,” Hasselskog said of Candela’s first customers. “They tend to be tech enthusiasts, if you like, with an optimistic view about the future and the ability of technology to solve all kinds of societal challenges.”

Navier’s investment backers include Google co-founder ­Sergey Brin, which means he’s probably getting one, too.

Are boaters ready for this?

Probably not. These early electric boat models are expensive, heavy and could instil more serious “range anxiety” than what drivers have felt about electric cars, said Truist Securities analyst Michael Swartz, who follows the leisure boat industry.

“How safe is it for me to go out … miles from shore, in an electric outboard engine?” Swartz said.

Swartz said they might make more sense to use electric motors to power a fleet of small rental boats, perhaps at the widely used boating clubs.

“You’re not anywhere near the type of electric boat where you can go 50 miles offshore and go fishing for a couple of hours and come back,” Swartz said. “There’s no technology that can enable you to replicate that experience outside of an internal combustion engine.”

Bring on the water taxis?

Both Candela and Navier are planning for a secondary market of electric ferries that could compete with the gas-powered vehicles that now carry commuters around populated regions such as the Stockholm archipelago or along San Francisco Bay.

Hasselskog said the same technology powering Candela’s new leisure boat will also be used to power a 30-passenger catamaran prototype that could operate in Sweden by summer.

For a city like Stockholm, which has already electrified most of its public ground transportation, its dozens of large ferry boats are an outlier in producing carbon emissions.

“They need something like 220 of these [electric] vessels to replace the current fleet,” ­Hasselskog said.