
Zin Boats reinvents the electric boat in a bid to become the Tesla of the sea - breck
https://techcrunch.com/2020/08/11/zin-boats-reinvents-the-electric-speedboat-in-a-bid-to-become-the-tesla-of-the-sea/
======
jmpman
[https://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
Now that makes sense.

The surfboard sized version is very cool.

[https://youtu.be/ieigm2t9apk](https://youtu.be/ieigm2t9apk)

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jdonaldson
Price 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
> 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!

~~~
johnwalkr
Train wheels are pretty interesting. To keep good performance, wheelsets (axle
and 2 wheels) are regularly removed and the wheels are machined on a lathe.
This can also be done while the wheels are on the train. Then every couple of
years the wheels are popped off the axle and new wheels are pressed on. The
axles last like 70 years.

With such care, the rolling resistance is very low, but it takes a bit more
power to start moving. Despite that, one strong person can push one rail car,
usually starting with use of a pry bar.

A locomotive cannot actually move many rail cars from rest. That’s why there
is slack between each car, and to start, the locomotive is first reversed to
push the rail cars together, then moves forward, pulling a single car until
the slack is taken up, which pulls the next one, and so on. That’s also why
you see one locomotive pulling so many cars. If a train stops on an incline
for some reason, it generally needs to reverse all the way down the incline
and start again.

The static coefficient comes into play during braking and if the locomotive
wheels slip under power. For that, sand is applied to increase friction.

~~~
jdonaldson
I didn't know some of this, thanks! I used to live near an active train yard,
and one of the warnings people gave me when I moved there was the sound caused
by the trains "stacking" (which is the noise caused by each of the car
couplings pulling out of their slack).

I thought it was a drawback at first, but now that I've moved away I kind of
miss it.

~~~
johnwalkr
I used to work in the industry, mainly designing the machines that handle
wheels and I really miss it and miss being in the railyards.

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DamnYuppie
Frauscher 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)

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ogre_codes
So 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
Tesla'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
Yeah, 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.

~~~
zbrozek
I 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
Cars 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.

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bfieidhbrjr
Whenever I see the "something of the something" I always think of anchorman
movies and eating bats being the "chicken of the cave".

~~~
devindotcom
Yeah 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.

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jungletime
There'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
It'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
And 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.

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walrus01
That 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_I...](https://techcrunch.com/wp-
content/uploads/2020/08/ZinBoats_Interior_front.jpg?resize=1536,920)

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
A 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
yes, 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
I figured that stuff was on the little orange "Torqeedo" display to the right
of the steering wheel.

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owenversteeg
OK, 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.

------
gnicholas
Interesting 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
I 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.

~~~
gnicholas
Couldn't it make sense if you only use the boat every day or two, and it's
docked in the sun when not in use? I can see that it wouldn't make sense for
cars since cars are typically parked (1) out of the sun, in covered/enclosed
structures, and (2) near power outlets, which provide an alternate source of
energy.

Some people might want to use a boat infrequently, and not near charging
stations. But perhaps a speed boat isn't the type of boat someone would choose
for this due to lack of sleeping quarters, fridge, etc.?

~~~
makomk
It definitely makes sense for some applications. For example, I believe Uma
was running their electric motor purely using solar for charging for a few
years: [https://www.sailinguma.com/electro-
beke](https://www.sailinguma.com/electro-beke) Not a huge amount of solar
either - 480W of panels on a 36-foot ocean-going sailing yacht, shared with
all their other electrical needs. It worked for them because they were
primarily _sailing_ , with the motor used briefly for maneuvering in tight
areas like harbours, so they had plenty of time on passage and at anchor to
recharge the batteries between each use. (Their current setup has regen, so
they can charge the batteries by sailing - basically a very indirect form of
wind power. Some small sailing boats have actual wind generators but those are
loud and take up space.)

For speed boats? Probably not. Those things are small and incredibly power
hungry - going fast on the water is expensive in terms of power used.

------
dharma1
Has anyone experimented with DIY electric hydrofoil boats or surfboards? it
looks like fun

[https://efoil.builders/](https://efoil.builders/)

~~~
chrisdalke
I'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
looks 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
Another 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)

------
throwawaysea
There’s also Silent Yachts (solar panels, battery, and diesel range extender):
[https://newatlas.com/silent-55-solar-powered-ocean-going-
cat...](https://newatlas.com/silent-55-solar-powered-ocean-going-
catamaran/60207/)

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woodandsteel
This 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.

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et2o
This 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.

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fourseventy
Doesn'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.

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Animats
$250K? $30K-$60K is typical for an open speedboat in that form factor.

~~~
brk
What 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
There’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.

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codeddesign
Maybe 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..

------
th3typh00n
Personally 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
How do you compose an elevator pitch without this idiom?

~~~
aww_dang
Speak 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.

