Range Anxiety Attack

Silent Yachts’ solar powered S60

Feb 8, 2024

Everyone is talking electric. At the boat shows, there’s electric outboards big and small, electric cruisers, power catamarans equipped with solar panels, sloops with auxiliary electric engines that act as regenerators and all manner of electric toys like PWCs and wakeboards.

No matter how much I know this is not going to be the case, I keep picturing boats with very long extension cords and colossal batteries. Where is all this actually going to settle.  The correlation between water and land vehicles is obvious – I can see cars and trucks ultimately finding a network of recharging stations along Canada’s highways and biways, but I just cannot picture how this is going to work with boats.  Theoretically, the Rideau or cottage lakes could have a series of recharge stations. But would this get you up the St Lawrence or around Vancouver Island?  Maybe.

I saw a video presented by Evoy, a Norwegian electric propulsion outfit (special note – oil rich Norway is switching 100% to electric vehicles sales in 2025.) that showed windmills powering recharging stations in the reaches of the fjords. Yamaha just acquired Torqeedo, so they must believe this works.

As a boating journalist, I am all in. Let’s go electric. As an individual boater, I might go for a hybrid if there is one that fits purpose. As a pedestrian, every time I almost get run over by a sweet grandmother on an electric scooter, I am reminded that anything is possible.

John Morris, Online Editor

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