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Comment by JacobDotVI | Hacker News Reader

>And 50 nautical miles range is... not much

This is plenty of range for day trips throughout the Spanish, US, and British Virgin Islands. You could do multi-day trips if you planned your overnights at the various marinas with power hookups (e.g. Scrub Island, Cooper, etc.)

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To add to this, since our boats are foiling and carry a battery that's also in the BMW i3, we don't need super-fast charging to cover daily use.

A 22 kW charger, like a semi fast one you'd find on the road, which is about a 1/5th of the strength of a first gen Tesla Supercharger, would fill our battery 0-100% in 1.5 hours.

>This is plenty of range for day trips throughout the Spanish, US, and British Virgin Islands.

Or indeed the Stockholm Archipelago, which I imagine is what this is designed for.

For sure it's enough for the Stockholm archipelago, and pretty much everywhere else along the Swedish east or west coast. As a day cruiser 50 nautical miles is more than enough.

Yes! Mikael at Candela here. Our customers in Stockholm often do overnight trips to the arcipelago, changing overnight. Even with 230V/16 amps, which is common in the archipelago, the 40 kWh battery will charge up overnight. That’s an added advantage of having a very energy efficient boat - you don’t need a oversized and heavy battery.

Have you considered a solid oxide fuel cell to charge the batteries and increase the range? They can run on anything from ethanol, to LPG, to hydrogen.

Are there even any commercial products with these in them? I did a cursory search and the top 12 results were all research papers or research institutes. I found one company that produces the cells but nothing analogous to an internal combustion engine. A gasoline or diesel powered boat has a conventional engine block with intake and exhaust that's attached directly to the propeller. I don't see how any company could use a fuel cell if they can't buy it as a complete generator.

Bosch backed Ceres Power has a compact SOFC stack close to market in partnership with Nissan as a range extender for electric vehicles. The tech exists and cost more than within within reach for yachties. Bloom Energy are also players in the space. Honda has the FCT Clarity. Not sure why this tech isn’t being pushed more for marine uses; reduced price sensitivity and high volume manufacturing isn’t really a concern for a large segment of the market.

Hydrogen would be awesome, but where you gonna find fuel for it. Most of boat fuelling still happens with jerry cans.

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