Plugboats: Canada’s electric boating companies on the move
July 25, 2024
Two of Canada’s leading electric boat companies are making news with the announcements by Montreal’s Vision Marine Technologies’ of new 30th anniversary VOLT X boat and Vancouver’s outboard manufacturer ACEL of their new funding of $10 million USD (CDN $13,750,000).
Vision Marine started out as a boat building company in 1994 – the Canadian Electric Boat Company – and changed its name in 2020 while in the initial development stages of its E-Motion electric outboard system and completing an Initial Public Offering on the NASDQ stock exchange.
The company has continued to build electric boats throughout and now has combined its two fields of focus in a 30th anniversary edition of that combines their Volt 180 hull with the E-Motion outboard drive.
The drive train has been adopted separately by other boat manufactures, like Four Winns, but this anniversary edition, the VOLT X, is the first time the motor/battery system and hull have all been designed and assembled in-house.
The new VOLT X uses a single stepped down version of the E-Power 180 E drive that was at the heart of a speed record of 116 mph (186 khm/h) set last August at the Lake of the Ozarks Shootout with a purpose-built catamaran using twin systems.
The company has sold over 300 of the Volt 180 hulls, and the new VOLT X hull is also ‘purpose-built’ in that the company made revisions to put the battery pack as the foundation around which everything else revolves. It is located low down in the hull to optimize balance, performance and efficiency.
That results in an 18 foot (5.4 meter) dayboat (modelled after European picnic style boats) that can go 40 kmh / 25 mph with a range of about 100 kilometres (60 miles).
“This is a great boat for our 30th anniversary” says Mongeon “because we have put in all of our learning – boatbuilding, hulls, motors, batteries. The hull is proven and improved, and it is all designed and built around the battery to make the ride perfect. It’s what people want in an electric boat today. Room to relax, good speed when you need it, and range. You don’t have to change how you go boating. You can just enjoy.”
ACEL is another Canadian company that has developed both medium and high power electric outboard motors, although they are celebrating their 4th year of being in business, not their 30th.
After building their first prototypes in 2022, they started full production and delivered the first motors in their ‘IE’ Series (Intelligent Electric) in 2023 – the IE50 and IE75. Early this year they showed demos of their higher power models, the IE150 and IE 250, at the Toronto and Miami Boat Shows, and will be using some of the proceeds from their funding to add them to the production line.
The oversubscribed funding was led by Tau Capital, an Abu Dhabi-based private venture capital firm committed to supporting advancements in science and technology for a positive impact on the world.
Brad Allen, Managing Director at Tau Capital, said “We are excited to partner with ACEL. With the shift in environmental regulations and growing demand for sustainable solutions, ACEL is exceptionally well positioned to meet the market needs with their patented technology, manufacturing capability, hardware-software integration and experienced leadership.”
Allen also joins ACEL as a board director, bringing his decades of experience in global finance and as a seasoned start-up entrepreneur with multiple exits.
The funding will also be used for R&D innovations, scaling operations, and advancing sales opportunities.
One of the already developed features of all ACEL drive trains is their modular battery system. While we refer to the ‘battery’ in a boat, the correct name is a battery pack. Individual battery cells – small units with about the same voltage as a AA battery – are assembled into battery modules, which are then assembled into the final battery pack.
The ACEL system allows the modules to be placed in different sections of the hull, so any boat designer/builder can achieve the same kind of optimization and weight balance that Vision Marine did in the VOLT X. What’s more, the modules can be connected and configured either to add power or to add range, and can also be integrated with solar, generator and hydrogen fuel cell systems.
Unlike Vision, ACEL does not build boats, just electric outboards, which include the battery, battery management system (BMS) and monitoring software as well as hardware for the throttle, key fobs and displays. Their market is OEMs and consumers looking to repower a fossil fuel boat.
Anthony Liu, CEO of ACE, says “This successful funding is a solid foundation for realizing our vision of a comprehensive product portfolio that will accelerate electric boat adoption, particularly in North America and Asia.”
Go Canada!
Jeff Butler is based in Toronto and is the Editor/Publisher of plugboats.com, the international website covering everything electric boats and boating. He is also President of the Electric Boat Association of Canada and is busy preparing to bring electric motor boat racing and exhibitions to Toronto Harbour in 2023 for the first Toronto Solar Boat Races.
