9 ms·
Zin Boats reinvents the electric boat in a bid to become the Tesla of the sea
- bfieidhbrjr 6y agoWhenever I see the "something of the something" I always think of anchorman movies and eating bats being the "chicken of the cave".
- devindotcom 6y agoYeah I tend to stay away from them myself but in this case the comparison was too apt. You'll be glad to know I nixed "cyberboat" though.
- ogre_codes 6y agoSo hard to get excited about toys built for multi-millionaires. Quarter million is a bit of a reach for a toy. Call me back when they make one for... $50k?
- jdminhbg 6y agoTesla's first car, the Roadster, sold for $120k (~$145k today after inflation): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Roadster_(2008) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Roadster_(2008) Gotta start somewhere.
- devindotcom 6y agoYeah, that's what Piotr told me (I'm the author). Boats are already very much a luxury good and the first question is not of reaching a large market but proving that the product is superior. Once that's established you can differentiate up and downmarket. In the article I note a cheaper (still $175K) version is already in the works, and of course costs only go down with scale. I'm not one to get excited about toys for millionaires either but this one is potentially the beginning of a major change to a pretty gross industry.
- ogre_codes 6y ago> I'm not one to get excited about toys for millionaires either but this one is potentially the beginning of a major change to a pretty gross industry. I agree on all counts. I should have known the price tag was going to be up there when in the first couple paragraphs it mentions the boat is all carbon fiber. While boats are luxury goods, there are some great options in the $75k range which are similar at least on the surface to this one. That's what got me about this thing, it's not just double the cost of a comparable, it's more more than 3 times the cost.
- zbrozek 6y agoI have no use for a boat. But my parents have one from the early 90s and would love to get an electric replacement. I think $100k is probably the upper limit though... And I've often thought about how easy (compared to cars) it would be to make a good one. I thought it would make for a good between-jobs hobby project.
- nickff 6y agoCars are extremely complicated; boats are much simpler because the production volumes simply do not support such complexity. That said, an electric boat is subject to a great deal of corrosion and other problems; I personally know of two electric boats which have caught fire and sustained significant damage.
- gnicholas 6y agoInteresting there aren’t any solar panels. I guess the weight would undo the charging benefit for most customers? I wonder if folks will add them after market or if it’s just not useful for a watercraft like this.
- simonebrunozzi 6y agoI did a high-level study a while ago. It makes no sense for cars, or boats, to consider solar panels. They just don't produce enough energy to justify their presence there. It might make sense if you incorporate solar panels into large sails, but the engineering required to make it work (main problem: too much weight; not enough elasticity) is essentially unsolved for now.
- breck 6y agoDo you have any numbers to share? Is it 10x too slow, or 100x, 1kx etc? I don't know have any sense.
- cagenut 6y agoThey are starting to exist, this is one thats already been produced and sold so has some real-world numbers: https://www.silent-yachts.com/silent55/ https://www.silent-yachts.com/silent55/ 10kW of panels, 2x30kW motors (or 2x150kw for more $), 75kWh battery (150kWh for more $). I forget where I saw it but iirc cruising at 5kts was less than 10kW out the screws. Meaning you can do 5kts for as long as the sun is up, and then for 7.5 hours more off the battery. If you want to do 9kts (on that short a hull) you're looking at like 50kW and therefore it would drain the bigger battery in 3 hours. A rough rule of thumb for solar panels is they're worth four hours of full output a day, so that panel setup is good for about 40kWh/day. You can either use that to travel 200 miles, or use it to charge up the battery. It very neatly fits the 100 mile/day + 2 - 5 days at anchor travel lifestyle of most "cruising" catamarans (sailboats). This guys youtube channel is cataloguing all the electric and solar boats he can find: https://www.youtube.com/c/JimWaltz/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/JimWaltz/videos Whats most interesting to me is all the indian/thai/phillipine solar ferry's that are getting built. Those are not eco projects, those are people finding niches where this really is the more economical choice.
- th3typh00n 6y agoPersonally I avoid any corporation claiming to be the <famous company> of the <different field>, since that implies they are unable to succeed on their own merits.
- jessaustin 6y agoHow do you compose an elevator pitch without this idiom?
- aww_dang 6y agoSpeak to the merits of the product or find an alternative attention grabber that people don't instinctively tune out. There are some openers that people flag as preceding a BS spiel.
- woodandsteel 6y agoThis is too expensive and short range to sell in any significant numbers. That said, batteries are steadily becoming more energy-dense and less expensive. That means the proportion of cases where an electric boat makes sense will be steadily increasing.
- jungletime 6y agoThere's a popular sailing channel called Sailing Uma. When they were first getting started, on low budget, they DIY a used a cheap fork lift motor. They recently got rid of it, but it lasted them many years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoD-j9Dy6xQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoD-j9Dy6xQ
- odonnellryan 6y agoIt's tough. It takes a lot of energy to move a boat. And boats go slow. Sailboats go 6mph or so under motor. And they use about half a gallon of diesel an hour (for a boat ~40ft) to do that. That's a ton of fuel! Electric motors are probably 2x as efficient (probably more like 1.5x? I guess?) But even then you have to fill your boat with expensive batteries to even get 1/20th of the range of your normal boat with 50gallons of diesel.
- davidjade 6y agoAnd not just that, now you have to have a way to put all that energy back into the batteries each day. This is hard to do from solar or wind alone if you need any sort of real-world range (20-30nm/day for instance). It may be Ok for a day sailor that just uses an engine to get in and out of the harbor but if you use your boat to do real travel you can't always rely on wind for sailing or a dock to plug into at night. For instance, in a typical Pacific Northwest summer even a sailboat ends up motoring a lot in the Inside Passage with few places to recharge from plug-in electricity. Some hybrid systems that use a diesel generator and lithium batteries almost get there but it's tough to make it all fit in a sailboat in the 35ft range, which is a popular size. Diesel is a pretty compact energy storage system for boats and it's hard to beat. We recently had to repower our sailboat and we just couldn't make it work without severely limiting our range.
- jdonaldson 6y agoPrice aside, boats are a fairly compelling electric vehicle. Boats are one of the most efficient means of transporting large amounts of freight : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transport In short, doubling the weight on a ship does not double the energy needs required for moving it. The same can't be said for wheeled transportation, let alone air. Batteries are very heavy, but on boats this doesn't have to be a big negative. However, we're not talking large amounts of freight here, this is more or less a personal watercraft. Also, for personal watercraft most of the energy is spent on accelerating and decelerating, something that boats are not as efficient at. So, good idea in theory, bad idea in application.
- jakecopp 6y ago> In short, doubling the weight on a ship does not double the energy needs required for moving it. The same can't be said for wheeled transportation... I wonder how the physics of freight on a ship vs a train works. Yes, the static coefficient of friction of train wheels would make it harder to run a longer train, but I see some awfully long freight trains with only one or two diesels at the front!
- barney54 6y agoTrains are very fuel efficient. CSX says trains can move a ton of freight approximately 492 miles on a single gallon of fuel. https://www.csx.com/index.cfm/about-us/the-csx-advantage/fuel-efficiency/?mobileFormat=true https://www.csx.com/index.cfm/about-us/the-csx-advantage/fue...
- jdonaldson 6y agoYeah, I'm surprised by these numbers. I think trains might end up being more efficient in an "ideal" sense. The rails really help remove friction from the equation. TIL. I suppose you'd have to factor in other issues in the "real" world, like managing inclines, curves, and starts/stops for traffic. Boats generally have fewer constraints on those fronts. Also, boats can increase their size in more than one dimension, which lets them increase size more geometrically and efficiently (trains can only get longer, and hits practical length limitations faster).
- owenversteeg 6y agoOK, I was a bit cynical but this actually does seem like a well-designed boat for what it is (a superyacht tender.) Stable, accelerates fast, appears well made, 10/10 toy for the rich. I imagine it'll be popular in that market if they manage to make them in large enough numbers and don't have any serious problems they'll do very well. That said, it is still a quarter million dollar toy for the rich... so the environmental impact of one dinghy (electric or not), amongst all the megayachts and private jets, is really nothing. In case anyone's curious about specs, they're 20'/6m long, draft 18"/0.45m, 1850 lb/840 kg, seat 5-10.
- jmpman 6y agohttps://candelaspeedboat.com/ https://candelaspeedboat.com/ Candela has an electric boat with foils, using the advantage of electric motors to provide high instantaneous torque to pull the boat out of the water. Once on the foils, the power required is a fraction of a displacement hull at equal speed.
- Animats 6y agoNow that makes sense. The surfboard sized version is very cool. https://youtu.be/ieigm2t9apk https://youtu.be/ieigm2t9apk
- pottertheotter 6y agoWas going to post the same. If I were going to get an electric boat, right now it'd be a Candela. They also make microadjustments to the foils while cruising, which is a cool innovation.
- ctdonath 6y agoStarting price US$210,000.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- L_226 6y agoI really want a solar powered catamaran[0] with hydrofoils now [0] - like https://www.silent-yachts.com/ https://www.silent-yachts.com/
- DamnYuppie 6y agoFrauscher is an Austrian boat manufacture that has been making electric boats for over 70 years! https://www.frauscheramerica.com/electric-yachts https://www.frauscheramerica.com/electric-yachts Their styling, engineering, and quality of build are all exceptional. This Zin boat looks like a shoddy toy. Another commenters mentioned it would make a great tender for a yacht, its size to seating capacity is too small for most yachts. This company looks like another SV VC pump and dump that is to be hyped up so the naive an uninitiated waste time and money on an inferior product...sigh.... As an aside Frauscher's 1414 Demon is one of the sexiest power boats you will ever see. I highly recommend the youtube review! https://www.frauscheramerica.com/1414-demon https://www.frauscheramerica.com/1414-demon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bW_siGAYTa0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bW_siGAYTa0
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Animats 6y ago$250K? $30K-$60K is typical for an open speedboat in that form factor.
- brk 6y agoWhat new boat can you get for $60k that is not an entry level model? A 23’ Chris Craft starts over $100k these days. That is something that I would put as roughly on par with what they are marketing this electric boat to in terms of buyer profile. $250k is still pricey, possibly double what a similar gas boat can be had for, but you’re not going to find something in that class under $100k from most makers today.
- boogies 6y agoThere’s more than one comment here about competition and I’m curious how they compare because the article seems to write them off: > Like electric cars, they enjoyed a brief vogue in the early 20th century. And likewise they were never considered viable for “real” boating until quite recently. … > And in fact there are a few competitors, but they tend to be even more niche or piecemeal jobs, mating an electric engine to an existing hull and saying it’s an electric boat that goes 50 knots. And it does — for five or 10 minutes. Or there are custom boat builders who will create something quite nice for a Zin-type customer — head on over to Monte Carlo and buy one at auction for a couple million bucks. > Zin sees his boat as the first one to check every box and a few that weren’t there before.
- codeddesign 6y agoMaybe I’m just playing the uneducated fool, but that much electricity, surrounded by water with a boat having wet decks is a little worrisome to me..
- fourseventy 6y agoDoesn't look very seaworthy to me. A bit of chop and i bet that thing will struggle and be a very rough ride. Might work ok on a lake or something though.
- walrus01 6y agoThat photo showing the LCD screens in the center console that are not angled to face the seat position... I really doubt those will be viewable at all in direct sunlight. In the photo they're already barely legible. This is what happens when you directly implement a concept rendering into real life without taking into account other environmental factors, and real-world human UI requirements. https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/ZinBoats_Interior_front.jpg?resize=1536,920 https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/ZinBoats_I... How is that in any way a good design? It's like they wanted to slavishly copy a Tesla, but without actually making it usable for the person piloting the boat.
- jessaustin 6y agoA speedboat is pretty simple to operate. A steering wheel and throttle lever really are enough. Since the screen is mostly for entertainment, the driver shouldn't be especially accommodated. The design might be improved by better shading from the sun, but it shouldn't be made less egalitarian.
- walrus01 6y agoyes, and no, I don't see any gauges for battery percentage remaining, throttle level, anything like that. The equivalent to an instrument cluster on a power boat.
- jessaustin 6y agoI figured that stuff was on the little orange "Torqeedo" display to the right of the steering wheel.
- throwawaysea 6y agoThere’s also Silent Yachts (solar panels, battery, and diesel range extender): https://newatlas.com/silent-55-solar-powered-ocean-going-catamaran/60207/ https://newatlas.com/silent-55-solar-powered-ocean-going-cat...
- dharma1 6y agoHas anyone experimented with DIY electric hydrofoil boats or surfboards? it looks like fun https://efoil.builders/ https://efoil.builders/
- chrisdalke 6y agoI've built a few ~10-20 hp equivalent electric boat motors and some smaller brushless pod motors like the ones that efoils use -- It's really satisfying engineering work and you have to master so many disciplines along the way: machining/fabrication, CAD, electronics, software, etc... And as with any project of that complexity, you could spend a lifetime just getting interested in a single part of the project.
- dharma1 6y agolooks like our chinese friends already have the motors, ESC's and so on ready to buy, and there is open source software - so the project thankfully becomes more an assembly exercise, similar to building drones
- dharma1 6y agoAnother electric boat from Finland - http://q-yachts.com/ http://q-yachts.com/ - looks beautiful. They have been making electric propulsion for boats for ~15 years - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceanvolt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceanvolt
- et2o 6y agoThis is a really good idea! Most recreational boaters do far less than 100 miles per day. I wonder how quickly the price will drop if they make it out of less exotic materials.