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Are we closer to an electric tow boat?


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@Orlando76 I'm not sure exactly what you are complaining about. Virtually every house in the US has 220 delivered. 3 phase (440 volts) is rare and an industrial application and not relevant. You do have a point on wire size, the 6 gage wire to my boathouse is only rated for 30 amps - not enough for a fast charger (it's 220 of course). But the service is in conduit so pulling new wires should not be prohibitive. My service from the power company is 100 amps so I'd better not have too much else going while I'm charging.

 

Regarding weight, while a 350 Chevy block is listed at around 500 pounds, the all up weight of the engines I hauled back for my ZO American Skier conversion were over 900 pounds each. There's a little more battery weight available to keep weights similar.

 

The real issue will be fuel availability. Electric cars are mandated and faster than we can imagine they will dominate the roads. Gas will be a specialty item, expensive and hard to find. Like the 100 octane leaded avgas planes need (it's already happened to other recreational activities).

 

My old MC with the blown engine will be an electric conversion experiment. Not at the top of the projects priority but it's on the list.

 

Eric

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Haha ya

1 - I have always liked to call it 110 and 220... I'm not sure why maybe I'm stuck in the distant past. To be clear they've raised 110v service to 120V ish to ensure you have adequate power.. but if you take a meter to a loaded circuit you should have within 10% of 240 . Better? (even though that could be as low as 216v *grumbles*

2 - it is, but also I'm sort of using the general idea that the vast majority with have a *cough* 240 volt 100 or 200 amp service already and that this will likely be a sub-panel run off of that service and not stand alone. In which case 60 amp sub vs 200 amp sub can be a big difference in wire cost.

3 - I assume you mean having the owner install a 480v 3PH service - which isn't actually all that easy to convince the poco to deliver! I have an old vertical mill that's 480, and while I run it on a VFD I have to watch what all is on at my place when I fire it up, like switching off the hot tub breaker!

 

@eleeski depends how big your conduit is, there are fill tables to let you know how much wire you are allowed to have in that conduit, and sometimes you end up having to replace the whole thing :(

 

Ideally you would have enough run capacity to charge off peak hours as well.

 

 

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Just had to do some math on this...the math doesn’t work for now and maybe not for a long time. You can buy a lot of gas for a guesstimated price difference between the 2 powered sources of say $50,000. Correct me if I’m wrong...that’s 500 tank fulls for a 25 gallon tank at $4/gallon. Or 10,000 sets at 1.25 gal/set. If a set is 15 minutes that would put the boat at 2500 hours use. The gap widens once you include the power consumption cost of the electrical boat. Sorry I’m in Canada so not sure exactly what the US fuel price is.
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220 volts single phase (which means you can tap 110 volts off one leg - relative to ground). Volts times amps equals watts. Watt hours are what you are billed for and compare to gallons of gas. Gasoline, not methane or lp for most boats.

 

220 is the normal minimum design rating. The power companies can deliver somewhat lower. But if you are trying to figure real power usage (watt hours) using 240 will overestimate things and cause issues.

 

$50k price difference might not be real. I'll tell how much the MC costs if I do it but I'm hoping it will be similar to a new ZO engine. That doesn't mean the boat companies won't charge 50k...

 

Eric

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Golfguy - very reasonable question for which there are a number of answers -

 

1. Electrically powered vehicles are quiet, have loads of torque and (probably) are less damaging to the environment

 

2. They have far fewer moving parts and are much cheaper to service. Winterization? Pah!

 

3. As the car industry moves towards a future where most cars are electrically powered, how easy is it going to be to obtain engines, parts and fuel?

 

4. Many boats reside in places where there is lots of sunshine - could this be used to power the boat?

 

So lots of potential reasons to consider this option. The technology isn't there yet, IMO, but will probably get there eventually

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@AdamCord - you know it is more complicated than that. If that were the case the grid wouldn't be in as tough a shape as it is now. There is the regulatory aspect. Can't build any new nuclear plants, can't hardly keep the existing ones running or store the waste long term. Coal is bad depending on who is running the gov, and windmills are god aweful expensive and have a relatively limited lifespan (not to mention the only work when the wind is blowing). You're not going to get any major new hydro power because that would require messing with nature. Any efficient form of electricity generation requires fossil fuel in the form of coal or natural gas or nuclear fuel.

 

The same hippies who want all the electric cars are sitting in their air conditioned houses. AC would be a good thing to regulate before cars ;)

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The question was...are we closer to having an electric tow boat? Answer... yes we are. Nautique's GS20 is proof. Are we going to see it in the next few years...probably not. For those of you that say they are never going to own an electric boat, I think that depends on how old you are, Bottom line, the boat industry will follow the auto industry. Just look where the auto industry is going. Almost every manufacturer has said they are moving away from the internal combustion engine. GM's announcement this week is proof positive that the auto industry is in a period of massive and rapid change. Probably the biggest change since the auto industry started. When the electric motor is all that is offered by car companies, a gas powered boat will actually cost more than an electric boat.
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Chevy Volt was replaced by the Bolt. @oldjeep Enjoy your gas powered engines for as long as you can! It's not just Ford and GM, but literally every auto manufacturer out there who is moving away from internal combustion engines. Electric and autonomous driving is where the entire industry is going. That's a simple statement of fact. How long it takes and the impact to the boating industry is clearly debatable... but IMHO I see electric towboats being a serious percentage of overall sales in 20 years.
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US electric car sales are probably not a very good measure on true electric car desirability, subsidies play a pretty significant role in their sales, we are after all a society that gravitates to all things on sale. In the more open market environment, we gravitate towards large Pickup Trucks and SUV's powered by large & powerful IC engines.

 

In assuming that due to fewer parts an electric powered boat will be cheaper to operate, we do not know the true reliability or service life of an electric powered boat. The battery replacement lifespan may throw a major kink in the cheap to operate curve or maybe not, simply way too soon to know. At this time, we would be diving headfirst in to the great unknown. Once hard earned cash is on the line, many early takers will probably become reluctant until they have a better understanding of the impact of electrification. The car companies all put a pretty good safety net under their electric options.

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@Dacon62 the only reason for the tech to cost "more" would be to punish us.

BMW I3, Tesla's Model 3, Chevy Volts - they're all priced from about 35K base, not sure how much MC pays for an Ilmor engine or the transmission - but I can only assume since we're paying so much for the "emissions regulations" on current engines that they should be able to cut us a reasonable deal.

 

@oldjeep - a good argument for electric vehicles helping to solve some issues with tech such as solar, wind, hydro etc. is that as adoption of electric vehicles and battery technology improves that you can use every plugged in vehicle as a sort of storage medium for the grid. In England - the TV Pickup (massive short peaks in power consumption) when people have a break from a soccer game and all turn on their electric tea kettles causes huge 3 minute power demand spikes - where you cannot turn up your coal, nuke, solar, or wind production fast enough, and if you turn them up they can be hard to shut back down when all those kettles finish boiling. So they've build things like pumped water storage stations which are basically reservoirs at higher elevation with a pond at lower elevation and a turbine/pump between it. They have teams of people literally watching the TV shows so that if something happens like a time out in a big soccer game or a technical broadcast issue where everyone gets up and gets a beverage they can respond and predict how much water to dump through the turbines to keep the grid from browning out.

 

All this is to say, right now our ability to maximize the efficiency of greener power is severely limited by the lack of storage capacity in the grid. EV's are probably going to be the best single way for every home to have a "house battery", and by coordinating the cost of electricity with the ability to store more efficient/green power in the grid by treating each car as its own sort of storage cell we'd be able to change the grid infrastructure.

 

We know that people get in their cars and commute home then plug back in. They also tend to turn up their A/C when they get home for comfort, and turn on more electronic appliances. If their car has 80% left and they arrive at a charger they could easily be given the option to pay extra to charge now @ Peak, or to charge the battery later - and for now let the grid use that 80% as a local source of electricity and pay you for that power.

 

Multiplied out your boat could be another battery and you could have a schedule programed for when you wanted it "full", you could have an app if you decided to head to the lake to tell the charger to top off and the rest of the time the grid could pay you to be a buffer.

 

Solar is the same thing, unfortunately for boats - solar sort of stinks, we ski at the end of the day, and again in the AM, and if its a nice sunny day during the weekend we use it then too. So we're unplugged whenever solar is nice and powerful. Wind however would be great, as we ski less when its really windy!

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We just need boats powered by water. Some guy recently showed where he was using a certain frequency of sound to break apart h2o into hho. It was way more efficient than using electrolysis. You'd basically have the same engine, but no need for the fuel tank, since the whole lake would be your tank.
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And as solar gets both more efficient and less costly, many people will generate a fair percentage of their own power. That will go hand-in-hand with increases in battery efficiency and decreased cost. As mentioned previously, a huge driver in all utilities is peak demand. The ability to self generate (i.e. increase supply) should more than offset increased demand.
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@Bruce_Butterfield good old Tom Ogle and his pressurized 1/2" thick plate steel fuel tank. I thought it was supposed to be a ford galaxie.

 

Regardless a nissan leaf consumes 30 kwh minimum to go 100 miles. Ogle claimed to get more than 100 mpg using regular fuel which contains only slightly over 30 kwh of energy MAX . Out of an IC engine that still has drag in a super heavy old 351 ford powered car...

 

Even the math dont work.

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In high school, I won a science award in the NW states. And then lost at the next level in the western states region to a kid who built a carburetor that got over 100mpg, and used it in his car to drive to Great Falls, Montana from somewhere in California. This was back in 1981.
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@jayski Yeah but the lithium mine used to be in a rainforest before global warming. On the other hand, the oil sands area was a desert before global warming...

 

Things change, adapt.

 

I'll probably never get the electric boat to match ZO.

 

Eric

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The Rivian R1S and R1T both look great - great styling. I like them better than the current offering of trucks and SUVs and the performance statistics are undeniably superior. I would have to give some serious consideration to the R1S when it is time to buy my next Suburban, especially if they do hit that $50,000 to $70,000 price range. As always, the range and charge time are the key considerations. I also don't think we know enough just yet about long term maintenance costs or total cost of ownership. I suspect it will be comparable to fossil fuels at some point.

 

As for electric boats, I would seriously miss the throaty rumble of the V8, but I won't miss winterization, troubleshooting misses/fuel/spark/power loss/compression issues, or the mammoth engine box. Of course, as with the cars, range and charge time are important here as well.

 

I think we will fully embrace electric for both types of vehicles. It will just be sooner than some are willing to accept and later than some would like to wait.

The worst slalom equipment I own is between my ears.

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There are already noises in Australia about taxing electric car owners for road use, they will be cheaper for a while but that won't last as governments find new and creative ways to tax the sh1t out of them. I drove a Tesla this year and ran some numbers on a purchasing one and the servicing costs were a bit of a surprise, they don't come close to stacking up just yet. (in Australia) The prospect of an electric ski boat is really exciting, imagine how easy it will be to fine tune the pull with instant torque... Which ZO setting would you like? I'l take j32 thanks...
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If that prediction is remotely accurate, cheap gas and cheap ICE will be available for the marine market. Food for thought, the marine industry was the last to drop the old iron block GM V8 and they did not do it willingly, they did it because the well went dry. Good chance that scenario would play out again.
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That video also picks and chooses. Something everyone uses day to day like say the tablet... oh 80% adopted very quickly. How about minidisc....

 

If you pick reteoactively techs that are proven and "lasted" you can make those curves look however you want. Add in hoverboards, segways...

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The R1T is a Cool truck but STARTING price is $69k and that often grows before actual launch . What 'they say' they can do and what a large electric vehicle actually can do, especially when towing, could be worlds apart. Electric certainly has its place and will grow share in the personal transportation market. There is much more focus on scooters, bikes, cars and trucks than-- boats. So as long as oil is cheap and ICE's continue to get more efficient, I will holding onto my 6 gallon gas cans.

 

Now if we can get a hydrogen fuel cell in a boat, with a refill station nearby.....then you have an electric boat without the recharging issues and your only residual is more water.

@DW get to work on that!

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@RAWSki : the tank won't be the problem, filling it will, and your red 6 gallon cans won't work too well... GM has a fleet of hydrogen powered vehicles that have been running around for roughly a decade, the infrastructure for refueling is the hurdle.
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@AdamCord @Laz wrong side of the coin to look at anyhow,

 

The tar sands are not all that economically viable unless the price of oil is really high - if it never goes back up expect Alberta to have an oil recession.

 

Lithium however is getting more expensive the demand is higher year after year and vehicle batteries are becoming the major use of the lithium instead of small electronic devices.

 

So the environment question of recovering it is one side of the coin, lithium still doesn't cost enough to really be worth recycling the batteries, battery recycling is currently more of a proper disposal.

The other side of that coin is geopolitical with who gets to influence what in good old south america.

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Mining for the rare earths and exotic materials that go into electric vehicles and the batteries are not without potential serious environmental consequences. Best practices and reclamation can mitigate the damage from any extraction - whether it's fossil fuels or minerals. Blanketing electric vehicles as bad for the planet is as bad as saying they will save the planet.

 

Imagine how polluted things would be if we all used "natural" horses for transportation. We'd be buried in manure!

 

I trust we can responsibly deal with the consequences of electric conversion while making fun quality products (boats!).

 

Eric

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