The Future of Boating is Electric

When we talk about Electric Vehicles (EVs) it’s often about electric cars, but as innovation around EVs continues to grow and the ecosystem that supports them evolves, electric boats now moving on to center stage.  The X-Shore Eelex 8000 electric boat is the brainchild of Swedish serial entrepreneur Konrad Bergström – and it’s being hailed as the Tesla of the sea.

Scandinavia has a long history of boating culture, and when you combine that with very technologically advanced societies that puts sustainability very high on the agenda, it’s no surprise that some of the most interesting and exciting innovations in electric boating are coming out of Northern Europe. And with a global market that is expected to grow 11.9% through 2027, its clear the electric boat revolution has arrived. But even 25 years ago, when few were thinking electric, Swedish serial entrepreneur Konrad Bergström had already registered the X-Shore brand, with the idea of bringing boats as close to nature and the environment as possible.

“There are a lot of companies doing cool renderings and people often think our boat is a render as well,” explains Christofer Rosengren, Head of Programs & Products, X-Shore. “Then we meet them at boat shows and they’re like ‘Wow, this is real! You actually have a boat!’ And we don’t have just one boat, we have two – and we have mass production, which is where people start to have confidence in the future of electric boats.

It may have taken twenty years from idea to inception – but then it was just two years for the first prototype to be launched.  That first prototype, launched in 2018, was the Smögen Edition, and in January of this year X-Shore launched the Eelex 8000 in Europe and to the US market in February.

While a lot of companies working with electric vehicles see themselves as primarily tech companies, X-Shore also sees itself as a green company just as much if not more than a tech company.

One of the reasons it has taken so long for EV technology to be applicable marine side is that electric boats are, in many cases, piggybacking on tech that has already been developed for cars. The difference is that car companies have huge budgets, while it would be nearly impossible for a boat manufacturer to to spend the same kind of money the car industry has spent on developing this technology.

“Now we have a mature technology from EVs, but different applications” says Christofer Rosengren. “On an electric car, for example, as long as you just drive 100km on the road you use maybe 20 horsepower out of the 250 that you actually have. Cruising speed on a boat is typically defined as 80% load when it comes to combustion engines – at the point where you have 80% power-take out on an electric boat you will be really stressing the battery and the technology to get that power out. So, yes, we’re using technologies developed for EVs, but need to squeeze them, adapt them to actually make them work for boating.”

How the X-Shore solution works

The basic building blocks of the X-Shore Eelex 8000 are a battery, an electric motor, and a shaft and propeller – very much in line with conventional propulsion to get all that energy out. What X-shore has done is taken out a lot of the power, including the continuous power, because it creates a lot of heat, which is easily addressed by the cooling system, given that this is a boat and there is plenty of water available.

“Once these basic pieces are in place, you need control,” says Christofer Rosengren. “For X-Shore, our ambition is to make our boat as close to a conventional boat as possible, so that the switch to an EV boat is as smooth, easy, and painless as it can be for boaters used to conventional engines.

“What’s most interesting is that when people visit us at boat shows they do a test ride and realize that it’s like a big sofa platform. You can bring ten or fifteen people along for food and drinks. The boat is built for sociability, with a huge center consol.”

When it comes to sustainability, it’s no longer a buzz word – people want real value. They don’t want to just hear the talk, they want to see companies walking the walk.

“There is real business value in being sustainable,” says Christer Rosengren. “And we don’t use an electric motor as our sustainable argument – we take it much further and explore new materials such as bio fibers, flax fibers, ert. We go into the details: what kinds of materials do we want to use? What kind of process do we need to manufacture parts? The factory we’re currently setting up south of Stockholm will have focus around being more sustainable throughout the chain. We’re looking into new technologies to be as green as possible end-to-end.”

And when it comes to the future?  It’s looking very bright indeed.

“We are looking at amazing future. The demand is growing fast and we’re really excited to be opening up the new factory. We of course have a product portfolio and are looking into new models, so there’s a lot of stuff happening in the next few years. A lot of companies are moving into the electric boat sphere, but we are confident we will accelerate and be the company that scales electric boats.

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