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Comment by mliben | Hacker News Reader

haha yeah, 100% I'm sure someone is already considering it... (looking at my co-founder eric, he loves motorcycles)

We have received significant interest for high performance ground and marine applications, which we plan to leverage in the short-term as a way of getting lots of in-situ run-time for our technology without the hurdles of certification. We will be pursuing the long road to certification in parallel.

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Also, cargo UAV is a big one right now. Many UAM companies are using this as a stepping stone to start generating revenue while they certify their aircraft.

Marine is a big one though.. especially in Scandinavia. Lots of interest in electrifying boats and ships there.

Is the scale of the engine for marine applications very different to aviation? Ferries usually have huge hulking diesels so I'm curious what the equivalent electric powertrain is like.

I'm also assuming that a scaled down version would be ideal for personal watercraft?

We are planning to add a MW-class machine to our portfolio in the next five years which could serve as a nice replacement for the dirty diesel engines on these larger ships.

Looking at Taiga Motor's electric jet ski, 250kW would be a bit on the high-side. It would also be a very expensive jet ski :) https://taigamotors.ca/watercraft/

I would look at utility and patrol boats, like RHIBs, for your motor application. I bet it would fit very well together.

In marine use, as a former ship driver (naval, not commercial, so needs could vary), I would prefer a larger number of small engines I can vector rather than one or two larger engines. It removes the need for tugs from both the maneuverability standpoint since you have vectoring and the safety standpoint since you could have redundant systems.

Don’t many modern ships already have this? I recall watching “Big Ships” or some such on Discovery Channel about 15-20 years ago where they explained ships already having multiple stern and aft, starboard and port, “pods” either with jet streams or rotors.

Sure, but having driven ships with those, they're not as maneuverable as they could be. It takes time to deploy the pods and often they aren't available at high speed.

Now that makes a lot of sense. Unlike side thrusters, you'd be able to use all engines to provide forward movement for max speed while also using the same engines for low speed maneuvering.

Hey, my neighbor had a small home built plane that was powered by an old 2 cylinder generator engine. Maybe you should sell yours as generator engines too?

(Yes I'm kidding. I know. I'll stop trying to trick thermodynamics.)

The funny thing is that’s a pretty common way to get three phase power from single phase supply.

Really? That's amazing.

Also, leaf blowers and trimmers. I'd pay to have my neighbors' gas powered ones replaced.

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