Re: Can Electric Marine Propulsion Be A Reality (in pleasure craft)?
being an engineer with a background in diesel and natural gas gensets, mobile equipment, hybrid mobile equipment, electrical outdoor power equipment and the marine heat exchangers, I am finding this post humorous.
is it plausible to make a battery powered electric propulsion boat - yes. is it practical - no.
even based on engineering a 30hp install on a sailboat in lieu of a perkins 104, the cost equated to about 25 years of diesel based on actual use.
The only thing see that is ?humorous? is the fact that we?re all just one more big gas hike away from parking our boats, or selling for whatever we can get for them. Yet there?s not one among us (or even a few collectively) who has the knowledge, and conviction to do something about it. I complain because I don?t know how to do anything about this problem and there are others who have the knowledge but will do nothing because they see no demand for a new technology. QC made that point and I suppose he?s right. But, I believe there is coming a day when we?ll be sorry that this industry waited so long to get started working to solve this problem.
Everyone doesn't have your professional training/knowledge, but we all suffer from the high price of fuel. Some more than others, depending on their personal wealth. I think you missed the point of this thread. I never intended to solve the mystery here in a blog or to somehow come up with a formula to overcome what we already know to be basic principles of design. Even if this is not a viable option it has gotten people talking. That?s the first step if anything is ever going to change (improve).
A lot of good information has been presented. I and other non-engineer types have heard from the professional experts. Whether one chooses to accept their information is a personal choice. Let?s say you all are right and this idea never comes to fruition. That doesn?t equal defeat and it doesn?t mean a lot of good ideas won?t come from researching this idea?s viability. It?s just means more time doing brainstorming, research, testing and excluding non-productive ideas to find the breakthrough. Remember, Thomas Edison said he was not a failure because he knew of 10,000 ways a light bulb won?t work.
