Then came steam, naphtha, electric, gas and diesel. Prior to the 1880s the only way to move a boat was by wind, current or oar. Their stated goal is that within five years the technology will be there to generate five times the energy density in lithium batteries at one-fifth the cost.īattery technology is probably the Holy Grail of electric propulsion. Q: With a 100-hp equivalent inboard motor, has the electric market leveled off?Ī: (Joe Fleming) There’s a government-led partnership that includes industry and academic researchers named the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research, which has $120 million in funding from the U.S. They converted one taxi from combustion to electric propulsion and cut their operating cost down to about 25 percent of that number, to approximately $50,000 to 75,000, versus $200,000. We had one client who has given us some numbers tell us they were spending about $200,000 a year running a 60-foot water taxi that pretty much travels all day at about 5 or 6 knots. The big advantage for the workboat side is maintenance because our electric inboard motors are rated for 50,000 hours and there’s only one moving part, so your cost of maintenance and management goes significantly down. What’s interesting in that arena is we’re finding a lot of opportunity because the return on investment is so strong. Our focus is really moving more electric power into the marine industry, both on the recreation side and the workboat side, which includes water taxis and tugboats. Industrialist Henry Ford and inventor Thomas Edison were among the celebrities who bought Elco electric launches and took them back to their estates. More than a million people rode the launches that year.
Riders were duly impressed by the quiet, clean propulsion in the days of steam and naphtha power. The original Elco won the contract to build 55 launches, each 36 feet, to shuttle visitors to the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. The Lamando family purchased the small regional wooden boatbuilder Hall’s Boat Corp. Lamando, 50, grew up in upstate New York. We’re going to see where market demand goes for that, but we’re at least penciled to look at horsepower beyond 25. “Then on the outboard side, we see a lot of opportunity to grow beyond where we are with our 5, 7 and 9.9, and then the 15 and 25. “We plan to grow our product suite to get to 500 hp on the inboard, which would really kind of help us become the go-to company outside of Siemens and GE, which build hybrid systems for cruise and other very large ships,” Lamando says.
A 9.9-hp equivalent will debut in early 2015, and 15- and 25-hp equivalent outboards will follow later in the year. Elco offers six patented electric inboard motors ranging up to a 100-hp equivalent, and the company launched its first outboards, including 5- and 7-hp models, this year.
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