Electric cars are everywhere these days, but what about boats? Looking to go green on the water, [NASAT] put together this impressively nimble boat propelled by a pair of brushless motors.
The boat itself has a completely custom-built hull, using plywood as a mold for the ultimate fiberglass body. It’s a catamaran-like shape that seems to allow it to get on plane fairly easily, increasing its ultimate speed compared to a displacement hull. It gets up to that speed with two electric motors totaling 4 kW, mated to a belt-driven drivetrain spinning a fairly standard prop. Power is provided by a large battery, and the solar panel at the top can provide not only shade for the operator, but 300 W to charge the battery when the motors are not being used.
With the finishing touches put on, the small single-seat boat effortlessly powers around the water with many of the same benefits of an electric car: low noise, low pollution, a quiet ride, and a surprisingly quick feel. Electrification has come for other boats as well, like this sailing catamaran converted to electric-only. Even some commercial boats have begun to take the plunge.
I don’t think I’ve seen anyone run two motors in parallel from a single ESC before. I’m rather surprised that works at all since the ESC needs to sense back EMF from the motor to know when to switch.
Depends on the ESC. Some have quadratic and/or three phase Hall inputs. If one motor is controlled and the other is just rolling along, they will eventually align by slippage and start working together. If it’s a toothed belt, you have to time them to stop the motors fighting each other.
Hmmm, OK but as a general idea I don’t see electrification of pleasure boats having either much appeal or advantage. Boats are plowing through, and “on plane”, with water. That requires a near constant output of power.
This is unlike cars, where a high output is need rarely, and the average power need is low. Additionally kinetic energy can be converted to stored energy for later use. This allows energy to be stored and used efficiently, thus lowering the energy needed to from A to B.
Though floating boats can better handle the added mass of energy storage (presently batteries) vs cars, I don’t see the advantage in doing so, short of being at mostly trolling speeds, for a typical boater. I expect a loss in efficiency in going to a BEV boat for normal usage. That means a too high cost per hour (unless you operate a GA plane, whereby high is relative) for general adoption.
I note his 4 kW is under 6 HP. Trolling indeed.
It’s the opposite. For boats not being in plane, the maximum speed is mostly determined by the length of the waterline and the power requirement goes up very much close to that speed. As an example, sailing 20% under hull speed requires half the power of 10% under hull speed.
However, high winds and manouvring require huge powers compared to under-the-limit cruising. A ship I frequently sailed on (26m long) had a 120HP engine (and was considered underpowered when manouvring) but based on fuel consumption we calculated the cruising power output to be about 30HP.
He didn’t answer the most important question:
Would you prefer to be electrocuted, or eaten by a shark?
Sounds incredibly stupid, I know, but some stable genius wants to know.
Not a problem since decades – electrical boats are a standard thing in Europe. Lots of bodies of water allow gas-guzzlers only for emergency vehicles. And these often have dual engines for quiet standard operation.
Fun little build.
Not a very large battery — I wonder how long it can sustain 4 kW. Certainly not more than 15 minutes.
I wonder how fast it can really go?
Not likely to confused with boats from the other Electric Boat Company, which do (at least) 25 knots for weeks, but they cost a bit more.
You often stay on a plane for more than 15 minutes?? On inland lakes that’s often enough to do several laps around!
This looks great for a very common kind of lake people. Plane from shore to an island for quick runs back and forth, using battery. Putter around at displacement speeds for sightseeing or just enjoying nature, using roughly the same power as the solar panel is producing. Swing into the fishing hole and drop a line while the batteries silently recharge.
Yeah, I’d use this. I’d use the heck out of this. I’ve pondered building exactly this minus the planing capability because I didn’t consider it within reach. Time to recalculate!
It seems like there’s a million of these “Man builds turbo powered speedboat out of wrecked scooter” or ” We built a Supercar out of junkyard Toyota” videos out there, and while they are relaxing to watch, they have no merit other than the artful fiberglass work. It looks cool, but it has no performative qualities which justify it’s creation beyond harvesting “clicks”. I have to admit that I do occasionally watch them, but always find them disappointingly lacking in specific details like speed, range, handling, and how much time it took to fix a certain cobbled together mechanism which was always going to fail under short term, light operation. There’s no actual engineering. Just ” This looks like it’ll work, and I have an angle grinder and a welder”. It’s like watching a low budget version of Orange County Choppers with no dialog. (I was tasked with performing some maintenance work on two of their creations which were in a display setting, and it seemed pointless, as that is about all I found them useful for!)
Thanks for giving me something to post about, but this is certainly not the type of content I come here for. I’d say about a third of the content here has already showed up in my algorithms before I see it here, and I may or may not have looked at it, and that’s usually fine, but this stuff here is just the common flotsam that lands on my shore, and clouds my search for actual, useful treasure.
Nicely written.