Re powering an old Grady .

[rockpool]

I'm kind of surprised that with the huge push to electric vehicles and solar powered this or that, that the marine/boating industry hasn't followed suit. Obviously it's a lot different fitting an electric motor into a vehicle engine bay and running it on the road as opposed to fitting it into the size of an outboard motor and running it on the water. I'm also assuming that it might not be cost effective to do that for an outboard motor? I'm also assuming that an all electric outboard motor probably has a lot less that can go wrong with it as opposed to gasoline and that people would never have to bring their boats in for maintenance? Or at least nowhere near as often as they do currently? Kind of makes sense as they'd lose a ton of money in selling extra parts and kits and so on. I'd love an electric outboard with solar panels on the roof of my boat to always have it charged up. I'd love to see something like this happen but it also seems like gasoline powered outboard motors are here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future.

Problem is, your roof simply isn't big enough to generate any useful power - other than to slowly recharge some batteries.

100HP is 75,000watts - a typical 5'x3' solar panel at best generates 300w so you'd need 250 panels to run your outboard assuming no losses.

A few HP, sure - enough to turn over a trolling motor maybe - but solar is never going to work for recreational boats.

And before anyone says "better technology!" - the sun lands around 1000w/m2 at best - so we might get a 50% improvement, but not orders of magnitude.

 

[PNW_Drifter]

 

[Mustang65fbk]

That's absolutely crazy looking. When I was in high school my buddy's parents had a ski boat that we'd go inner tubing on and one year he bought something called an air chair or sky ski. It's kind of the same idea where it has the hydrofoil underneath of it, so you'd sit on a seat and lean backwards or forward to control your height. You could even do jumps and flips with it and whatnot, which I never tried doing flips or anything, but it was the craziest feeling to be riding above the water and literally slicing through the waves on the foil and not feeling a thing. It was such a bizarre experience and can only imagine being in this boat would be like that times 100. This is a really cool boat with some very impressive technology, although not something I'd spend over $300k on, but still incredibly cool. I watched this video of the same announcer test driving another electric boat and think the power levels are just as impressive.

 

[Lt.Mike]

I would think the stumbling block for electric powered boats is weight. The average Tesla is about 5,000 lbs. which is about 1,500 lbs. more than a comparable engine driven automobile. Their going to have to find lighter batteries if they want comparable performance. Slow is fine for lakes but on the ocean you need to get up and go sometimes.

 

[PNW_Drifter]

Funny title for this thread!