Electric Boat - Ski Nautique

[liquid d]

The first one gets you about 20 passes, it's just a matter of time and economics. Batteries are getting better each year. Tesla's now have a range of 300 miles.

[Skoot1123]

It'll probably be another 10-15 years before it becomes really viable. Just my opinion.

[SkiJay]

Expensive gas may be close cause it isn't all about supply. It's also about taxes. Gas in Alberta costs $1/gal more than it does in the US, and Alberta is where the US gets a LOT of its oil. The price difference is all tax. Gas in America is just about the least taxed gas on earth. How much longer can a deficit laden US government resist this obvious cash cow? CC is wise to be pioneering the electric ski boat.

[Skoot1123]

@skijay - some of the price isn't even related to how much there is. The amount of raw material (oil) is astonishing! Problem is, is that there aren't enough refineries to produce it quick enough. I doubt we'll ever see another refinery put up in the States. (Not with this administration - but I digress) Until that happens, we will continually see gasoline prices rise. Maybe with nano-technology the batteries will be able to hold more of a charge longer. We shall see. Anyone know about the research that is ongoing?

[Ed_Johnson]

Plus our current administration won't approve the Keystone Pipeline and would rather import oil from Saudi Arabia than Canada.

Just wait till Iran gets bombed and our gas prices will double !!!!!

[Skoot1123]

@Ed_johnson - well said!

[DanE]

Maybe switching energy sources is a lot more complicated than supply/demand and tecnical solutions.

If we are going to use electrical power or hydrogen cells ( for example) the oil Industry is for certain going to want it 's piece of the pie.

Don 't expect the big oil corporations to just lie belly up and die.

[Ed_Johnson]

The oil co's will not go belly up anytime in our lifetime...They can actually make more money Exporting Oil and Refined Gas, than selling it here at home. In fact, they are already doing it.

 

Personally, I love new technology...We Solarized our house a few years a go and enjoy not having a Electric Bill or a Water bill..My Wife has a Prius that gets over 50 mpg, so I feel we are doing our part....I just wish our Government would do it's part and achieve energy independence...It just seems stupid to me to be importing oil when we sit on more oil and natural gas than any other country in the world..It also effects our National Security by depending on other countries for energy sources and holds our economy hostage when world events can instantly Spike as speculators see "Instability in the Mid-East."

 

All that being said, I would Love to have an Electric Nautique that's being charged by the Sun, rather than my 409 that drinks fuel from Saudi Arabia.

[6balls]

@ed_johnson you are doing your part for sure, at what I assume is a big cost to your pocket book. Long pay-off on the mpg advantage of the Prius, and the solar house is independent now but could not have been cheap. I'm sure the price of an electric SN196 would be a tough pay-off argument as well. Until it's mass affordable...meaning it get's cheap or gas becomes terribly expensive I don't look for much change on a large scale.

If at any time electric propulsion (auto and marine) becomes a serious threat, look for big oil to reduce prices to such attractive levels as to make the electric option cost prohibitive. @andjules is right in correction of my prior post, supply of oil is not likely to be a problem in the short-term and thus prices will be maintained by big oil to ensure lack of energy competition and ongoing profits.

On another note, cool profile pic Ed Johnson...what the heck is that? I'm a hack flying a Mooney Ovation who is very cautious in the air (in contrast to most of my life) in terms of safety minimums commensurate with my ability/experience.

 

[Ed_Johnson]

@6balls....The Profile Picture is a Aerobatic BD5 Jet I flew in Airshows for many years, sponsored by Bud Light. Actually had two of them and two other Aerobatic Planes I used for Competition, Movies, and TV Commercials...That with 10 years as a Fighter Pilot with 2 Combat Tours and 30 years as an International Airline Pilot in DC-10's and 747's........Still like flying upside down best.

 

Enjoy that Mooney, they are great airplanes.

[6balls]

@ed_johnson...very cool career. Must have been exciting, thanks for sharing.

[Ed_Johnson]

@6balls......Thanks Dave..The funny thing is the first exciting thing I ever did was skiing at 8 years old. Put in a Slalom Course made out of Linco Bleach bottles on our Lake in Southern Wisconsin at 12. Then went on to Flying, Skydiving, Aerobatics, and Racing everything from Corvettes to Indy Cars...Now that I finally lived through all those things, came round circle to skiing, the 1st thing I Loved..

 

I think about the old story of the little kid, out fishing in his rowboat, looking up in the sky, seeing an Airliner high over head. He says. "Wow, I wish I was up there doing that." Finally, many years later, he's a Airline Captain, flying high over head, looks down at a fishing boat on a Lake and says, "Wow, I wish I was Down there doing that."

 

Seems like everything comes Full Circle.

[wilecoyote]

Hey Ed, did you fly the BD5J for the Bond flick or was that someone else?

 

Back on topic, if it's economics that is driving electric, it's doomed. If everyone buys electric cars, the price of electricity will go way up, IMHO. Until non fossil generated electricty (nuclear is the most likely) is the bulk of the electricity, electric vehicles make no sense.

 

I still love the electric boat for other reasons though, (and cars for that matter) because you can "fill up" by plugging it in at home. for the weekend skier, it's still cool.

 

I think conversion kits make more sense than buying a whole new boat though.

[Ed_Johnson]

@wilecoyote.....Yes, did the Bond Film and several others, plus numerous TV Commercials and TV Shows like Miami Vice and the 6 Million Dollar Man. It was a great way to have a company with Airplanes, Race Cars, and Exotic Cars, and be able to write them all off with the tax structure that existed at that time.

 

Whats funny is a fellow Airshow Pilot, Art Scholl, got me into the screen actors guild, and his nickname was Wiley Coyote. Any relation ?

 

On topic, my goal is still to have ta fully electric car and boat that I power with my Solar Panels.

You can save thousands by doing it yourself. It's not rocket science and only takes a little research. No drain on the grid that way.

[wilecoyote]

Cool, no relation, WileCoyote is a kindred spirit, I've been using the alias for years. I'm always building some contraption or other and throwing caution to the wind. I just bought a boat and it's likely to be christened SupergeniusArt Shcoll IIRC was the guy with the Super Chipmunk, I remember that shot of him from the cowl facing backwards on the intro for Wild World of Sports I think. I wanted to fly for as long as I can remember and I flew light singles for a short time in my teens, but ended up as an Avionics Technician. You guys (and those nut cases air racing) the were super cool when I was a kid, nice to run into you on the net.

 

So that flight through the hangar, in the Bond film, was that for real?

[Ed_Johnson]

@wilecoyote....What was real was flying at the hanger and away from the hanger, with aileron rolls, over and over. The jet would have gone through the hanger in one second, much to fast to film. They filmed the inside of the hanger in England, with a Model of the Jet, fixed to a pole on an old Jaguar, with the top cut off.

The real flying was filmed outside of St. George, Utah, and a little town of Hurricane, Utah. It took two weeks to get it all done, just for the opening sequence. We got done just in time to make it to Oshkosh, to fly in the Airshow there, still in the MGM paint scheme.

[wilecoyote]

I kinda figured it was something like that. Still pretty cool though.

[ral]

Talking about smaller steps, why boat companies are not including systems like the BMW's automatic start-stop feature? Could have the boat automatically stopping for 30+ seconds in every pass...

 

Another possibility for club boats would be hybrid engines, that are recharged by solar panels (as there is no braking energy recovery), anyone doing this in the boating industry?

[Ed_Johnson]

I don't see why they couldn't use a couple of small paddle wheels, like we had with perfect pass, to run a couple of small generators. Similar to the brake generators on cars. Could be very low drag with high output.

Also, covering the roof of your boat house with Solar Panels is another option.

[BraceMaker]

@Ed_Johnson - the paddle wheels are drag, the paddle wheels for PP are small, and spin freely, so they aren't too restrictive, but the moment you couple them to get power, they're going to take more gas to push through the water, than they will regenerate in power. That's just physics, no matter how low drag the output will be lower than the drag. If you had flaps that opened/closed the flow to those, perhaps you could wrangle it, but boats decel so quickly when you chop the throttle that the amount of energy you could possibly get per pass are very low.

 

The start stop feature - unfortunately we utilize our engines to do lots of maneuvering for skier safety, don't want the engine shutting off while you are trying to maneuver around a downed skier for instance, no brakes! And most Hybrids you have a small engine and an electric motor as you only need the electrics 90% of the time, with the gas for accelleration and highway runs at high efficiency, our boats are backwards, you'd need the combined system for everything but low speed maneuvering.

 

What boats NEED is that system V8's in trucks have where the engine cuts compression/fuel/spark to cylinders not in need, so you could idle around on two or four cylinders, then when you pull the skier up you are on 8, when you are in the course it could cut consumption as needed, and you avoid all the extra batteries etc. Nice lightweight aluminum V8 engine with engine management software to save fuel, but I really suspect it will be primarily on V8 mode, as tow boats are super inefficient.

[Andre]

https://boatingindustry.com/news/2018/07/25/correct-craft-acquires-electric-boat-drive-system/

 

https://ortnerelectric.com

 

12 hours of use...?

[RAWSki]

Really interesting. I wonder if they ship "powerless" hulls to Austria and have the drive system installed there. (Possibly avoiding tariffs).

 

There are some small lakes around us in Michigan that only allow electric motors . Wow imagine the faces of peeps on their pontoons when a G23 drops in!

[Ilivetoski]

I can’t wait to see the price

[Andre]

@RAWSki

Thought the same thing!

Would love to see peoples faces on some small semi private lakes that allow only electric motors. >:)

[Drago]

That would last one day

[Wish]

[6balls]

Cool look to it. Cool to see the advances. Hole shot? He's never driven my (former) outboard Centurion! 60 in 5 seconds. Jim's former MC with the 6.2 ripped out of the hole, too, had to be cautious with skiers when your hand was on the throttle.

 

What ever happened to the Nautique venture/ski boat ventures? Given the Nautique was pulling skiers--I'm assuming it was faster than this boat.

[ALPJr]

Wow. Pretty nice. I’d guess it won’t be a relatively long time before major boat makers follow suit.

[Horton]

my spies tell me it will not be long but not for ski boats

[jjackkrash]

Nautique has a working/for sale electric wake boat, but clicking the electric box is pretty spendy.

[Horton]

@jjackkrash

it will be much more mainstream soon

[KRoundy]

https://nautique.com/models/super-air-nautique-gs22e/overview

 

MSRP: $312,962! Wow.

 

I guess what I wonder is how long it will run before losing power? They say 2-3 hours of “water sports use time”, how much of that time is not moving? It never says what the capacity of the batteries is. I’m not very interested in skiing behind a 5,900 lbs boat.

[BraceMaker]

@KRoundy - how much of a ski tournament as a % is under power?

 

Its easy to be critical but we know that boats idle a ton.

[Than_Bogan]

Encourage anyone and everyone to buy one of those bad boys! It's never gonna make its way to 3-event boats unless lots of rich folks pony up the $300k for that behemoth!

[addkerr]

Looks like perfect specs for us here.

355hp, 443lb-ft. Weighs 66lbs and is direct drive.

https://insideevs.com/news/564522/koenigsegg-quark-terrier-electric-motor/

[chrislandy]

They will come, and soon I reckon.

 

Idling uses nothing, manoeuvring uses pretty much nothing

 

I've done a desk study on it and it's feasible for private lake & small public lake use (say sub 2 mile long). Not really suitable for club boats as they run for long days and need quick turnaround for refuelling - H2FC would be suitable though rather than battery - but that comes with other issues like producing or storing H2 on site.

 

With a smallish battery, say 30kwh, it would weigh around 600-700lb (~100wh/kg) in LiFEPO4 or 400odd lb (~150wh/kg) in Li-ion and you could get 2-3 sets out of it before having to recharge, if you're driving a 15min set every hour, then just top up between if needed with a fast charger. Then have a 2-3kw solar array on the boat lift for mid week trickle charging for free.

[Jody_Seal]

 

[Jody_Seal]

 

I guess that ain't going to apply to boats?

 

 

[chrislandy]

@Jody_Seal you can say the same about gas boats, every year there are gas boat fires, fumes exploding in the bilge, poor maintenance (cracked hoses, leaky fittings) etc...

 

Most mainstream EV's use Li-ion batteries which can catch fire, but they have a higher energy density. Most home batteries and homebuilt EV's use LiFePO4 (Lithium Iron not Lithium ion) which do not suffer from thermal runaway, but don't store so much power per kg.

[Jody_Seal]

@chrislandy

Yea I deal with idiots that want to install non ignition protected equipment on the gas boats nearly every week.

I guess though the percentages of gas boats per units erupting into flames is far less (so far) then that of electric.

 

Please keep in mind also fiberglass materials derived from ????? Thats right Petroleum.

To try and equate a electric boat to a electric car

Is pretty nieve as the car is mostly metal.

It also depends on what part of the country one is getting their electricity from. In my area we have a coal fired plant that gets its fodder from diesel powered barges and diesel powered rail.

Even at $6.00 a gallon bang for the buck the gas boat is a far more efficient as well as more economical then that of the E-boat.

 

 

[unksskis]

Electric engines don't idle. Just sitting there ready to go. Idle time would not factor into run time.

[chrislandy]

Very true, but it also depends which country you're living in.

 

In the UK (2020 figures) electric generation from: coal 1.8%, oil 3.3%, gas 35.7%, Nuclear 16.1%, Hydroelectric 2.2%, wind & solar 28.4% & biofuels 12.6%

 

But as I mentioned before, it depends on the circumstance, if you ski 4 sets a week, then it'll work well and you can charge for free during the week using a solar array.

 

re resins, I'm not sure what the take up is these days (if any) but I was doing some research and structural testing of "green" resins about 10 years ago, a French company (can't remember their name right now) it had about 40-50% bio replacement for petroleum derived parts, I would think their research has improved the % by now.

 

What I was trying to convey was, with a marine application, you'd want to use the safer LiFePO4 batteries as they don't catch fire from overheating or piercing but would probably burn like hell if they did light up.

 

Premium gas is currently £1.80/l here, that's about $10/gal and looks to get to over £2/l by the summer ($11/gal) whereas electric is around 22-33p/kwh (30-45c /kwh) so electric is looking better and better

 

[ral]

Electric engines will take over mobility, there is no way around that.

[Vernon Reeve]

It would probably be easy for an electric boat to have a deep water start feature to pick and choose the type of hole shot the skier would like.

[unksskis]

@Vernon Reeve

why do you think that? I'm curious because in my experience Electric is either Stop, or Go, like a golf cart. If anything I would feel the opposite, it would be harder to alter hole shots. If there were hybrid options, where one or both modes were used, then I think that's an option.

[Andre]

@unksskis Tesla car are not stop and go and neither golf carts! Way easier to control speed and load on any electric motor then with a combustion engine.

remember also with electric motor: 1 rpm=100% torque!

[klindy]

@unksskis variable frequency drives (VFDs) are extremely sophisticated with programmable accel/decel profiles. Multi-phase motors and even servo motors can react incredibly fast. Motor control will be infinitely more sophisticated than what we see for an ICE today.

 

Here’s some detailed engineering specs on why the Tesla motors (copied by others) are different -

 

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Lauric-Garbuio/publication/347293927_Modeling_and_design_analysis_of_the_Tesla_Model_S_induction_motor/links/604869cb4585154e8c8ae003/Modeling-and-design-analysis-of-the-Tesla-Model-S-induction-motor.pdf?origin=publication_detail

 

The multi phase induction motor is why the motors can produce amazing power with very low weight and flexible design conditions.

[unksskis]

I gladly stand corrected.

[BraceMaker]

@unksskis quite a few electric motors are like that. When andre said 100% torque at 1 RPM you can think of a ton of examples of when that isn't true right? Like a ceiling fan where you can hold it stopped with your pink finger and it cannot even start up. Or say maybe a jammed up band saw where it won't start cutting.

 

But it just comes down to the large difference between AC motor types and DC motor types that exist on the market.

 

Most AC motors we interact with are very cheap and have to cheat to start spinning. But That's not all the types of motor on the market.

[Golfguy]

How is the desire for electric vehicles change when the fact that 80% of the energy used to charge them comes from Fossil fuel and Nuclear?