While the much lower fuel cost has to be a bit of a shocker (we all know EVs are more efficient and cheaper to operate, but not 95% cheaper), the bigger surprise has to be how much more convenient the electric boat was in a certain key way. “We actually had range anxiety, but not for the Candela. The irony is that the photographer’s gasoline-powered chase boat had to refuel six times during the trip, while we only charged three times,” said Gustav Hasselskog.
Electric Boat Costs 40–50€ to Cross Baltic Sea, vs 750€ Refueling Gas Boat
Submitted 17 hours ago by ArtikBanana@lemmy.dbzer0.com to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
vovo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 hours ago
Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
Oh, flying ferry is a nick name for hydrofoil, not an actual aircraft.
tankplanker@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
Big part of this would be that its a foiling boat and that massively reduces drag from the water. Keeping weight and drag down are the secret to improving efficiency for EVs be they boats or cars. Any decent marina its easy to get multiple 22kw shore supply as well, it can be expensive and metered but you aren’t going to be waiting that long to recharge your boat.
Electric makes the most sense on sail boats as they already have a green source of energy, and thanks to hydro they can convert some of that motion generated by the wind into charge for the batteries. Couple with solar and you start to look at a decent amount of energy generation.
Sail boats also tend to have far less powerful ICE than your average motor yacht, so you need less powerful EV motors to achieve the same speed, and in the right conditions you only really need the motor getting in and out of the harbor so your battery bank is smaller and lighter. Plus you could make the batteries do double duty as the house batteries as well.
The trick will be to get the super rich out of their shitty super yachts that burn a couple of thousand dollars of fuel per hour, they could already have sail boats but choose not to for the increased living space that they can get out of the same length of boat due to being able to build much higher due to no masts.
cosmicrookie@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
Isn’t this massively misleading? Comparing the fuel consumption to a chase boat that is not a hydrofoil, and blaming the efficiency on the fact that it is an EV?
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 2 hours ago
Exactly. Hydrofoils have a bunch of downsides (more expensive to buy and maintain, don’t work in shallow water, don’t work with big waves, etc), so it’s not like the average boat owner can simply switch to a hydrofoil boat. It’s a cool solution if it works in your particular area, but they’re not a drop-in replacement.
BruceTwarzen@lemm.ee 14 hours ago
A sail boat does the same distance for free
cosmicrookie@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
I actually would have typed that into my comment too, but i have no knowledge of how much slower a wind powered boat would travel upwind or how dependent performance would be on wind. I totally understand the need for mechanically powered transportation instead of using wind. My comment is mainly targeted at the misleading comparison.
Henry@lemmy.zip 16 hours ago
Imaging your boat got on battery fire in the middle of the ocean :)
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
Imagine tanks full of highly volatile combustible fluids on fire in the middle of the ocean 🫨
MagicShel@programming.dev 14 hours ago
Something something sharks?
IndustryStandard@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
Finally someone addressing the absurbd cost and emissions of illegally immigratijg.
Anyolduser@lemmynsfw.com 6 hours ago
Sanest Lemmy user.