Norwegian company Evoy was one of the first in the world to develop all electric boat motors with power ratings of 100 kilowatts and beyond. They now have lines of high powered outboards and inboard systems like the Breeze 120+ HP, Storm 330+ HP and Hurricane 400+ HP that are on the transoms and in the hulls of dozens of vessels from leading boat yards around the world. One of those is Axopar. I was able to chat with Leif out on the water in an Evoy propelled AX/E 25 at the Cannes Yachting Festival in September, and then back on land after the Metstrade boating trade show, where Evoy and sister companies Vita and Taiga had announced some exciting and groundbreaking battery news. This article is a lightly edited transcription of the podcast interview with Stavøstrand in which he talks about the past, present and future of electric boating. Listen to this article as a podcast SCENE: Speaking in the ‘go-slow / no-wake zone’ at the Cannes Yachting Festival Plugboats: Leif, when you and I first talked, I had just started Plugboats, and you had just started Evoy. Leif Stavøstrand:
Yeah, it’s been a few years. We started in 2018, I think, and you and I talked pretty much the first year. So it’s been seven years now. PB: And does it seem like seven years…or five seconds…or a couple of lifetimes… LS:
It’s funny, when you look back at time, it seems like it’s fast, but like you say, it’s kind of been a lifetime. You can have really good news and really bad news in the same day, and you have this roller coaster of emotions and news. Norway’s Prime Minister Erna Solsberg launched the electric boat Evoy1 on August 2, 2019 PB:
And as I recall, it didn’t take you long to go from the concept to reality. LS:
We brought the product to market pretty early, which was a conscious choice. It also meant that our customer knew in the early days that there could be hiccups, but that we would be there to help them when stuff occurred, and I think that has been the right choice for us. Instead of doing R&D for 10 years, we got to adapt the product to customer feedback. PB: and that’s been helpful? LS: Yes, the customers sometimes manage to provoke things that we don’t see when we do our testing. It’s like, oh, yeah, you can do… ‘Oh, we hadn’t thought about doing it like that. Okay, let’s adapt to that’. So that’s been good for us PB:
And overall, has the adoption of electric propulsion been faster or slower than you thought LS:
I think we did expect things to move quicker. I think everyone did. Looking at the car market, it’s maybe not so surprising that things do take time, and it’s really different from region to region and country to country, because you have some markets that quite ready. Electric car markets more ready for electric boats But if there is a generalization, you could say that markets that are heavy on electric cars are typically also more interested and ready to go electric with boats. Where we see really good traction is often where there’s incentives in place. That really helps a lot. We’re seeing a good uptake in the U.S., both East Coast, West Coast, and we also have a good uptake in Norway, and there’s some along the Mediterranean. There’s some in Sweden, and there’s the commercial side – aquaculture, strong port and harbour, some tourism. We have quite a bit in there, tenders used for going out on the water with 12 passengers or so. We have got a few of those. PB: And what’s the split between new boats and repowers or refits? LS:
It’s mostly new boats. I think the driver there is that when people are getting a new shiny electric system, they typically combine it with upgrading the boat at the same time. I think we’re probably at somewhere between 80 to 90% on new boats versus retrofitting. We think that percentage might change over time, especially when we get like, cost down, then it will be easier for people to think, okay, my my motor is about to conk out here, and price isn’t that much more for for electric in many ways, with the outboard. Then again, the inboard is about 50% smaller than your normal inboard. In some cases 60%, in some cases 40%, but as a rule of thumb, about 50% smaller in volume. The AX/E 25 was developed in partnership with Axopar Boats. PB: That’s interesting that markets where electric cars are going well are also good for electric boats. LS:
Yes, with those that have electric cars, it’s a whole different conversation. People that are experienced with trying. Charging and how it works, and that they have to plan a little bit when it comes to how they use their car. They bring that state of mind into the boat as well. So it’s a lot easier conversation to have. SCENE: The boat we were out on with Leif was an AX/E 25, one of the models Evoy worked on with Axopar boats to create a line of electric models. The AX/E 25 has 220 kilowatts of continuous power and peak power – about 440 kilowatts, or almost 600 horsepower. I asked Leif about the battery and the charging time for an electric boat with that kind of power. PB: As we both know, Leif, charging is one of the things that people always ask about, LS:
After speed and range, charging is the most common question. PB: And so how big is the battery on this boat? LS:
This has 126 kilowatt hours, with 112 of them usable. PB: And what kind of charging time are we looking at? Evoy provides deep information about the battery on board LS:
This boat can recharge in 45 minutes from 10% to 80%, which is the typical charging that people do. PB: So that’s high speed charging. And other than that… LS:
Using semi fast chargers, and that’s more common, the time is three hours, We encourage our customers to use Type 2 charging. PB: In that situation the smart cable can read how many amps can safely come out of the outlet and into the battery? LS:
Yeah, that’s Type 2. However, if you only have Type 1, you can just set the amps on the screen, 10, 16, 32 amps…basically, if you have power in your marina, you can charge on it. SCENE: We then had an opportunity to get out in the big waters and go a bit faster. LS:
Are you ready for a little bit of speed? PB: Let’s do it! YOU CAN HEAR THE BOAT SPEEDING UP (IT IS VERY QUIET!) PB: We’re going 32 knots, now Leif, and we’re talking in a normal tone of voice. LS:
That’s electric! PB:
Both leisure and commercial boats are using Evoy electric inboards and outboards. Can you talk to us a bit about the different usage? LS:
A lot of our commercial customers are what we call ‘A to A’ customers – they go from one court, where they typically have the boat in the night time, and then they go back out and do something, if it’s lobster traps or oyster or monitoring or guard work, and then they go back into the same port. Recreational users typically have an ‘A to B to A’ use. They go out, they do something, they stop by at a restaurant, or those type of things, and then come back in. PB: So when people say they go out in their boat for three hours, they’re probably not driving for all of those three hours. Do they usually go as far or as long as they think they do or say? LS:
Never. They always overestimate. When you talk to them, they always give their worst case, which is fine in one way, because it was the same with the car industry that people typically told them “Well, I go for this one long trip a year, and I want to do it without charging.” But a lot of the electric car owners have adapted, and I guess it is the same for us. An Evoy-powered boat takes tourists on a non-polluting visit of fragile fjords PB: On another note, when you started Evoy, you were pretty much the only manufacturer specializing in high power electric marine motors. And now you’ve got some competition out there. There are about four or five others. LS:
Yes. Healthy competition is healthy for everyone. It sharpens us and keeps us on our toes, and it opens up the market too. I mean, if it was only us, everyone would be pretty skeptical, right? But seeing a lot of different manufactuers and motors in there actually makes it more believable that this is something that can work for more users. PB: I think that’s kind of true for electric boats in general. The more people see them, at their marina or wherever, the more they say ‘Oh, that looks cool, that works, Joe likes his.’ LS:
Oh, for sure, the neighbour effect is very strong. PB: Then there’s batteries. You must have seen so many changes and developments in batteries over the last eight years. LS:
It’s amazing, actually, to follow the development of the batteries and see how that’s coming, but it’s also kind of painful to see how long it takes to trickle down into the maritime industry. Obviously, the cars are in front of us, but one thing that’s been really positive to see is in the last couple years, there’s been a lot of focus on increasing how fast the batteries can charge, because that’s also very helpful for us. If a battery can charge fast, it typically can discharge faster and you need to have a C Rate that is better adapted to the boat industry, because we use more continuous energy than you do in a car. (ED NOTE: C Rate is how fast a battery can charge and discharge) So that’s one thing that we see. And then, of course, the whole price thing, it hasn’t really come into the maritime industry yet, but I think in the next couple years, we definitely will see some prices coming down. PB: We always hear news big things about solid state batteries and different chemicals and big breakthroughs. Do you think that there’s going to be a big breakthrough in batteries, or are they just going to keep getting better and better all the time? LS:
It’s mostly going to be incremental. But there are some companies doing very interesting stuff, a
