A new range of electric boats is making waves by avoiding them. In a social media post promoting a preview of Envgo's new NV1 model, the company said, "We're redefining boating."
The NV1 is a hydrofoil boat, which means that it has foils under the hull that act like airplane wings. As the vessel gathers speed, it lifts the hull out of the water, reducing drag and allowing the boat to maintain its speed with much less energy.
It's not actually a particularly new idea; hydrofoil boats go back to the early 20th century.
Italian inventor Enrico Forlanini is credited with the first hydrofoil device in 1906. That early contraption proved very difficult to control and could only be used in short bursts. Its aim was speed, but now engineers are interested in the energy efficiency of hydrofoil boats.
Unlike a conventional speedboat, the NV1 uses electricity rather than gasoline for energy.
There are about 11 million motorized boats registered in the United States, and almost all of them are powered by diesel engines. All told, they cause about 14 million metric tons of harmful emissions in the United States each year, per the Environmental Protection Agency.
Given most boats only spend around 30 days per year in the water, according to a U.S. Coast Guard survey, there's ample time to charge them. An article by the Liquid Grid argues that the low utilization means range anxiety is not an issue, making the vessels an ideal candidate for electrification.
The other advantage of an electric boat is less noise. It's not just human ears that suffer from the noise of a conventional speedboat; small fish are distracted by the noise and more vulnerable to predators, which harms the ecosystem's delicate balance.
For example, The Guardian reported that researchers in Australia found that the "cloak of noise" created by motor boat engines results in twice as many prey fish being eaten as the normal rate.
When paired with a clean energy source, like solar, the NV1 can offer boating enthusiasts all the thrills of a speedboat without the environmental drawbacks.
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