Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login
Foiling Electric Boat (candelaspeedboat.com)
194 points by punnerud on Aug 20, 2020 | hide | past | favorite | 145 comments



This looks like a lot of fun, but I'm wary of its safety. Foiling boats (at least the sailboats) have a tendency to come down hard off the foils if not sailed exactly right. That's why you'll see helmets worn by sailors both on big foiling AC72s and F50s as well as a the single-handed Wazsps, Moths, and UFOs.

The deep V profile the Candela's bow looks like it would handle dropping off the foil or hitting a big wave pretty well, and the 100 Hz foil control loop is reassuring, but my experience on little foiling sailboats would keep me cautious on one of these for a while. However, getting a boat to pop out above the waves is such an amazing feeling that I'd take a ride on one of these in a heartbeat (just maybe with a helmet!).

Some foiling sailboat crashes for reference -

- https://youtu.be/875yq0-ogwo?t=20

- https://youtu.be/frAkDEszgZc?t=26


You hit the nail on the head here. Safety is a key question that often comes up in discussions that we have with customers, and is of course a key focus in the development of the Candela model range.

As you mention, the deep V hull cuts waves pretty well, but we also have algorithms monitoring the position of the boat in 3D space, looking for signals that indicate a treacherous seastate or an unfavorable position of the boat. This means that we won't do the nose dives that you see in the sailing videos.

Be sure that we have landed unexpectedly quite a few times to get to where we are! :D

To sum it up, when you are accustomed to flying with the Seven and you know where the limits are in terms of wave handling, then it's no different from riding in a regular boat in choppy seas or high waves. Unruly seas require alert sailors, in all types of boats.

We're publishing a short video soon, purely focused on running through waves from large passenger ferries. Sub to our youtube to know when.


Looks like fun...in the right environment. For example, our local lakes have vegetation that comes all the way up to the surface. Hit a "kelp" bank at speed and it will not end well. I've had the experience of getting stuck in one such beds in a rowing shell. Let's just say it wasn't fun at all.

Open water with a low probability of colliding with anything near the surface? Yeah, this looks like a blast!


What are the limits in terms of wave handling? How well does it stack up to a large rib in rough seas?


Open waters on a windy day or the day after a windy day can be hard.

Check out our videos from the Caribbean and a comparison with an 8 meter aluminum boat in a choppy archipelago condition.

Can we foil in every single wave height there is? Abosolutely not, but our boats outperform regular boats in comfort in weathers where you'd normally bring out your 8 meter daycruiser/open boat.

It's also worth remembering that in rough seas, you can go down from the foils with no issue. You just cut the efficiency down to regular boat levels...


Hi, that's a really interesting boat concept.

Even if not foiling, can you still take the boat out with, say, beaufort 8-9 weather? That's more similar to what I was expecting in the "high waves" videos, and is not unusual to encounter when commuting or spending the day elsewhere, depending on your area (obviously, it starts being unpleasant if you want to spend the day at sea on a speedboat).

Edit: now realizing it, but your target market is probably only going to go out with calm weather in protected seas, given the price point and finish. I hope that sort of product will get mainstream at some point.


If you encounter force 8-9 while out on a speedboat day trip you've seriously messed up with your preparation and planning! it doesn't just come out of nowhere.

The reality is that it's the sea state that matters. A sheltered lake or estuary could only have 30cm waves with 40 knots of wind, whereas the open sea would have a 1.5m+ swell with 1m waves on top.


Let's just be honest, you're not going out in Beaufort 8-9 kind of weather with this size boat, foiling or not, unless you have to. I have a boat larger and likely more capable of taking on rough seas than the Candela and I will avoid those kinds of winds if I can, and only really go out in that kind s of weather if I must.


40 knots is already nasty on cruise ship. In this size boat you'd be praying to get home alive, let alone undamaged.


Yeah, you are right, I was mainly thinking about swell, which can sometimes be quite important, while local wind isn't particularly strong. Beaufort scale is more a wind scale than a swell scale, my apologies for using it. I don't think big waves are that problematic to navigate with a speedboat if the period between two waves is long enough, but I don't think foiling would work with that kind of sea. Since I used to live in an area where such conditions were relatively frequent, I was wondering how well the Candela could handle them.

My boating skills aren't that fresh anymore, despite living on one during my childhood, and spending a good chunk of my youth close to the sea. I might thus misremember or exaggerate things, but I am fairly confident of the above.


You're not wrong, but also the minimum foiling speed for this particular boat is listed at 17 knots. If you're navigating a speed boat through rough seas at 17 knots you're a braver person than I am for sure. :o)

Below that it seems to me like it behaves more or less like a regular boat. Regardless, I'd probably avoid speeds above 10 knots if I found myself in relatively high seas, and I'd just avoid going out in that kind of boat altogether if I had the option. If you do find yourself in that kind of sea though my experience is that most swells tend to come from one direction so you can find a good bearing surf the waves, zig-zagging if need be. Adjusting speed as need be is crucial in rough seas for sure.

It does have a reasonable draft without the foils extended it seems, 1 meter, and at 2.4 meters wide it seems like it could be pretty stable actually. It'll be interesting to see once my buddy gets his delivered.


I'm sure given my other comments in this thread you can figure out which customer of yours is my friend. We're on the Swedish west coast where the sea is quite choppy most of the time, so it'll be really interesting to see how well it performs. Happy to provide you with feedback as best I can.


Love your guys work. Do you have any thoughts on making something work for really rough seas? I want to make an electric boat suitable for Hawaii.


So can it go in the ocean?


So essentially you implemented "Glide-by-Wire" for boats?

( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fly-by-wire )


I can let you know how it performs in a couple of weeks – a buddy of mine ordered one of these before the summer and it's due to be delivered tomorrow. Rest assured I'll take every opportunity to tag along, especially since I'm looking at a lot of spare time on account of COVID-19 making my job redundant in a week or so. :o)


Do you have a ballpark idea of the price?


I know it was around or north of $250k, but I don't know the exact figure. I'll ask tomorrow or this weekend.


Are you in Europe?


Yes.


Following


I have some experience with foiling sailboats, and I would never expect the problems that foiling sailboats have to impact motorboats at all. Control problems are all well solved for motorboats, but the moment of a sail that is perpendicular to the direction of travel puts a huge kink in the picture that has been hard to tame. Even then, there have been huge strides lately...like the iFly 15, which uses a mechanical active controller which basically relies on two small rods with a float on the ends to measure foiling height and heeling, and mechanically adjust the coils to maintain stability. It works marvellously.


I recently picked up a foil board to go with my other windsurf gear, and the sail is absolutely a confounding effect

I've read some on the subject, and got a book by a famous boat designer, Kotaro Horiuchi, which describes the actions of the float controllers you are talking about as well as other aspects. Foil boats have to be fairly lightweight at the moment, which is why the america's cup boats are designed the way they are.

I've also seen those e-foil surfboards but have never tried them as the price point seems absurd.

My board (and all the foils I see on surf gear) just have enhanced static stability based on some combination of dihedral, a fuselage, and a negative lift rear wing, very similar to an airplane. That's because it's down to a shift of body weight, sailing forces, etc.

It's become all the rage in the last 2-3 years with things still not quite standardized. I had to drill out my foil-approved board to get larger M10 bolts in there.


There's a whole community of DIYers building e-foil boards at https://efoil.builders/. I haven't actually built one because I don't think I would ride it enough to justify the cost.

I do lurk on that forum and check out the projects people are making, there's a lot of really cool work done to 3d print propellers and other structural parts and bring the cost of manufacturing down. Between rapid prototyping and chinese BLDCs / ESCs, small electric vehicles like e-foils are actually reasonably priced to build yourself.


This is awesome - thanks for sharing! The commercial efoils have caught my eye but they're definitely outside my price range. Cool to see that you can get a efoil and a fun project a lower cost


Of course, once you buy the 3d printer, filament, metal cutting supplies, various epoxies and waterproofing sealants, cabling, soldering tools, and nuts and bolts...


Wow, looks like you can eat it pretty good on one of those sailboats. But.. a motorboat wouldn't have the same issues, would it? Consistent propulsion, and not having to deal with wind force on a mast?


That's part of the fun! For smaller ones like the Moth or Waszp anyway. Less fun and quite expensive in an AC75...

The dynamics of a sailing boat are far more complex than a motor boat. The drive comes from halfway up a huge lever (the mast) over the foils and its position relative to the forces produced by the foils is constantly and suddenly changing both on its own due to gusts and shifts in the wind and also caused by the sailor's inputs.

A motor boat pretty much only has to deal with going up and down over the waves.

It's like the difference between solving a linear equation and a higher order differential equation.


They do cover this in their FAQ.

If you are used to it, landing unexpectedly is quite undramatic. This can happen if you foil at the lowest speed limit, or if you attempt to cross a wake or seastate that is beyond the capabilities of the boat, which is approximately 1 meter of wave height.

Water is fairly forgiving when landing unexpectedly at the speed at which the Candela Seven can operate, although you might get a bit wet.


Foiling sailboats are crashing because of sail: their propelling vector is too high above sea level, which causes side or bow capsizing in split seconds. Motor boats has totally different physics, they rather take off, because they have heavy stern with engines and lightweight bow. If you put battery in front of vessel - it will perform even better.


Those crashes look about the same as what I've seen on catamarans (Nacra F18), or on single hull dinghies with trapezes, particularly when flying a spinnaker. That being said, not sure if adding the excitement of possibly capsizing hard to a powerboat would be a huge selling point for me...


I thought the same until I started sailing a UFO. You are going way faster than any cat or dinghies. Everything happens substantially faster and the water feels like pavement when you hit.


I don't think you have the same risk of stalling a powerboat foil like you would on a sailboat. You have much more predictable power at your disposal and something like a sharp header is irrelevant.


What about the Soviet Raketa boats?


Unreliable and very thirsty and not really foiling, just slightly over water.


Have you seen Boundary Layer Technologies? You should eat their lunch, they certainly could use more competition.


And here I was wondering what it was they had against Electric Boat[1]. Maybe they want to disrupt the submarine-builder market?

[1] http://www.gdeb.com/


That was my first interpretation too. Was relieved to find Electric Boat isn't being foiled by anything.


Do these things need to be drydocked? We have very fast and aggressive bottom growth where I live, race boats get cleaned every few weeks, cruisers develop a bit of sludge that turns into a full on boat bottom salad pretty quick.


http://q-yachts.com/ is also worth checking - not a hydrofoil but a beautiful (though expensive) electric boat


Also saw the Zin yesterday - clearly not at the same level of production, but they went the non-foiling route, and it seems like the torqeedo has a bit more range?

17 knot min foiling speed sounds quite fast, especially for water skiing in any sort of surf, but the Candela looks fantastic for getting around the lakes / bays on shorter hauls.


We also use Torqeedo, and a 42 kWh battery (35 ish usable for foiling). The thing about range in electric boats is that you rarely get figures for range at different speeds. A 35 kwh regularly built motorboat won't get near 50 nautical miles at 20 knots plus, due to plain physics.


Any idea how expensive? Asking for a friend.. :o)


Keep in mind that purchase price is a smaller fraction of the total cost of ownership for a boat than for other kinds of vehicles. Marina, maintenance, etc. are much higher recurring expenses compared to, say, having a weekend sports car that just sits in the garage most of the time.

Just because you can buy a boat, that doesn't mean you can afford a boat.


Oh believe my I know, I've been a boat owner for the past few years. Boats are money pits, no doubt, but also a lot of fun. The feeling of going out early in the morning in calm seas, as the sun is rising – it's hard to beat and makes you forget all the work and money involved in having those moments.

Obviously it depends on what you're going to use the boat for, but for me personally it's all recreational. Boating makes me happy, and as much as I'll cuss and swear every time I have to do maintenance and upkeep I still think it's worth it.

I'm sure you know the old adage of the two happiest days in a boat owner's life: the day you buy the boat, and the day you sell the boat. Still, we never learn. :o)



If you have to ask...


Does look like fun, but let's face it, 50 nautical miles is nothing on the water. I guess if you're on a lake the just under 60 mile range is enough to water ski but it's definitely not suited to deep water. And all carbon fiber, must cost a pretty penny. Great idea, hopefully battery technology innovates to give products such as this one a more practical use case.


I’ve done plenty of fishing 40 miles offshore in NC on a boat this sized. I can’t imagine anyone riding 80 miles in the ocean for “fun”. It is 5 hours of suck to catch fish. 60 miles seems like more than enough for day cruising. That being said, this boat is a total no go in NC due to draft... day cruisers have skiffs and sandbar parties.


After seeing the foils finally catch on in water sports I have been wondering why there are no foil boats. Great to see someone has made it happen!

I don’t do enough miles a year boating to care about the minor amount of fossil fuels I burn. I would be really interested in the foil tech with gas powered outboard. The foil boat must be must much more fuel efficient with a gas motor?


So, if my napkin calculations on minimal Google searching are any indication, you get about half the range as you'd get in the 240 Bowrider (50 vs 100 nautical miles), which honestly seems pretty good.

I'm not sure how much worse the efficiency is at lower speeds though, and there's almost always lower speeds involved for extended periods as you move through no wake zones.

Additionally, emergency capacity might be an issue (an extra fuel can isn't really possible), and if you do run out of power, it's not like someone could offer one or bring one, you're really looking at a tow, from what I can see.

Very cool though.

Note: I used this[1] for some quick info on what kind of fuel efficiency the bowrider got at different speeds, and used fuel tank size to estimate range.

1: https://betterboat.com/average-boat-speed/


Would this work if there are weeds or big fishes in the water?

The foil would get damaged pretty quickly, before actually killing most of the fish it comes into contact with.

The concept is very very old and well known. So there must be practical reasons why this was not commercialized.


Weeds can be an issue, unless the foils just cut through them. Taking off in a weed heavy water can be tricky, just like operating a jetski, a jet boat or a regular prop boat. It is true that a fish wouldn't fare too well either when hitting the leading edge of the foil, which is submerged to about 0.7 meters.

However, the foil can take quite a beating.

Regarding commercialization, which is a great question in itself, our experience tells us that it's due to: 1. It's hard to build controllable foils, especially in a "miniaturized" size like a 8 meter boat. 2. the technology to enable sufficient speed of electronic foil control hasn't been cheap nor good enough prior to the advent of consumer drones & smartphones.


As an electrical engineer, I'm intrigued. Do you actually control the angle of the foils during travel?

Is it to maintain a set height or change height too. I know that too high, and the boat becomes unstable.

I know that retracting the foils is a simple thing, relatively speaking.

However, if you are actually controlling the foil angle, isn't the technology available for decades? I mean there are cooling water pumps that change the impeller vane angles during operation at 400 - 700 RPM, there are helicopter blades that change angles, ship propellers can also change angle during operation, etc. There are many examples.

What technical problem have you specifically overcome in this case?


Great question. What's different in our case is that the flight controller captures the boat’s movements from 7 sensors. Then it establishes the full-state 3×6 state matrix (position, velocity and acceleration with regards to position in x, y and x and rotation around the same axis). This is partly done using sensor fusion algorithms.

We then use the outputs to control the angle of attack, along the longitudinal axis of the foil, essentially twisting it. The R&D that has gone into making this work reliably enough for a consumer product is our secret sauce.


I have a lot of questions and doubts, but I guess this would not be the best place to ask them.

Anyway, congrats on the product. It feels awesome.


Helicopter blades change angles mechanically as controlled by human input. I presume the big ship propellers are the same, except they're probably more "set-and-forget"? Obviously the automatically-adjusted foils of a speedboat this size are a completely different situation.


Is anyone working on applying electronic foil control to sailing? I'm asking this under the assumption that foil sailing is universally human piloted because it's meant to be a challenging sport and I might be wrong in that. But if it's human piloted I could easily see room for a hybrid approach where propulsion is provided by wind but controls are powered and automated to make it more approachable.


If you're talking about hydrofoils in general, they're commercial technology - I rode a hydrofoil ferry last month.


Does anyone know what their current status is? Their FAQs haven't been updated in over a year:

>How many boats have you delivered?

>As of March 2019, we have delivered 10 boats to customers in Sweden, Finland, Austria, the US and the British Virgin Islands.

>When can you deliver?

>We still have a few production slots available for deliveries for the summer of 2020. Scroll down and go to the order page to reserve one.


Mikael Candela at Candela here. Corona slowed us down a bit but we have delivered 16 boats so far to the US and Europe.


The video reports they have delivered 12. Not exactly producing at scale!


There are very few boats that’s hit high scale production numbers. They are often custom, and the market is much smaller for higher priced boats. 12 is lower than I would have thought, sub 100 a year isn’t surprising.


Yeah, most boat manufacturers in the world don't hit mass production numbers.

Fiberglass is relatively easy to work with requiring very little tooling investment. You can also easily "clone" other boats by taking a mold of the hull.

This means there are A LOT of mom and pop shops making amazing boats all over the world.

12 boats for these guys seems pretty good to me. Its very unproven technology and boaters don't like that. The sea is a rough environment and most wil prefer tried and true solutions with long supply chains for parts and service.


The boat is actually not fiberglass, it’s all carbon fiber. That’s why it’s so light - the hull is just 230 kg. A similar glass fiber boat would be 900 kg.


how do you intend to fix and cracks and similar things coming up over the sustainable lifetime of such a recreational article (probably spanning several decades)?


Carbon fiber doesn’t crack like fiberglass.


>> You can also easily "clone" other boats by taking a mold of the hull.

Be careful about this. In a truly strange exception, american boat hulls are protected by US copyright law... the dreaded DMCA.

"Title V of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the Vessel Hull Design Protection Act, provides sui generis protection for an “original design of a useful article” (where “useful article” is limited to boat hulls)."

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/vessel_hull_design_protectio...


Alive and well I hope – my friend is getting his boat delivered tomorrow!


@mstade - any updates? How's your friend's boat??


Imagine going through a NO WAKE zone at 35 mph


Generally wake size isn't a factor in "No wake" zones, they're instead enforced through speed limits. :( At least in Europe.


This would be incredibly cool as well as a tremendous time saver because going through port or to a dock is at this speed due to wake.


Thanks to our wonderful English language and the use of title case, I thought this headline was about countering or circumventing (foiling) the Electric Boat company - a manufacturer of submarines. The boat is cool, but I was hoping to see some anti-submarine warfare stuff here.


same, but I thought it must be about underbidding Electric Boat on a contract, and at a glance I thought the story was about Canada. Depends on your perception of the most likely threat models :)


Hardly the first... The SeaBubbles were tested on the Geneva lake (the one in Switzerland) three years ago... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SeaBubble


The Candela Seven is a finished product while the SeaBubble haven't made its way to production yet. With that in mind it's not unreasonable to think Candela had a prototype done before the Bubble...


I don't understand the point at all. At least in my area, most boats of this size are used for fishing, wake sports, or as a sailboat tender.

Larger boats with a cabin and accommodations are common as party boats but this seems a bit too small.


There are plenty of markets & brands around the world that see lots of 8 meter sized day cruiser boats.

Remember that boating is very locally adapted, with many boat models from Sweden never being exported to other regions, due to regional preferences and sea conditions.


Have you considered the bass-fishing market? Your boats are a little expensive but not terribly so. Speed might be a bigger problem.


I want to strap wings to the side and make a foil/ground-effect crossbreed.


and then coat the wings with triple-junction GaAs solar panels for a 5kw "wind" at your back.


Strap one these babies on there for a real "solar wind" at your back:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_sail


How does one get one of these onto a trailer and down a boat ramp? It seems like the hydrofoil adds enough draft that it would scrape the bottom on a lot of public access ramps.


On the website they show the foils retract into the boat.


Wonder if you can somehow combine foils with sea legs to walk that thing on the beach :)


Is there a good solution for removing sea grass that got tangled on the foil?


How do foils affect the turning characteristics of boats?


Very smart solution. Looks like it could be the ideal candidate for some solar panels too


How much is this ?


There's one for sale in Florida for 295 grand. I can't imagine it's supposed to cost that much, so I'm assuming that either it's someone scalping one of the first 12 due to scarcity, or they'll be dropping prices significantly as they increase production quantities.

A super nice diesel boat like this would cost 20-50k. And 50 nautical miles range is... not much. I love boats, but it's hard for me to imagine the use case here. Hopefully it's like Tesla and all improves very rapidly (price, range, etc) after the early batches.


>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.)


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.


Your price seems off. My parents bought a decent 28' center console with twin 275hp outboards that was 2 years old and it was well over $100k. I was just looking for a boat in the 24' range yesterday and $50-60k seems like the minimum for anything built within the last 5-10 years.

I agree that's an insane price for a boat under 30 feet, but new boats are stupid expensive these days.

E.g. https://www.boattrader.com/boat/2019-pursuit-s-288-7560060/


It's probably somewhere in that range though. A friend of mine bought one new and is having it delivered tomorrow. I can't say for sure how much it was, but I know it's around $250k at least.


NIce information


Looks awesome


Certainly looks smoother than smashing into waves.


> Always connected to the cloud via 3G network

> High frequency data logging for enhanced

> support and fleet learning

When will manufacturers finally learn that these are NOT pros, they are very serious cons‽‽‽

I do not want my data sold, and unless you plan to pay me a rate I set, my data is not an asset you can use in developing your business.


Pretty sure anyone who can afford this boat isn’t concerned about Candela selling their data. Likely far more concerned that Candela uses the data to improve their experience.


You're not in the target market.


so, what's the purpose of this thing. Because taking out "fossil fuels" of a senseless activity just to use up 20% less of our liveable environment, seems -ehm- idiotic?


That's a great question. Purpose. Even though some might consider boating a senseless activity, people around the world enjoy it dearly. Boating is simply one of the world's biggest outdoor activities.

We could have gone for trying to make people quit buying, using and spending on boats, but that seemed a lot harder than creating a better alternative to regular boats.

5 years of R&D, sweat, tears and big load of broken foils later, we are in full production with a boat that reduces local emissions by 99%, compared to fossil boats.


so in what wonderland are you charging your boat with this 99%-less CO2-grid?

And guess what, boating could arguably also be done with a 100% reduced emission footprint. It's called sailing.

Btw: what did I miss that owning and operating a boat is one of the biggest outdoor activities (especially small motorboats?)?

As far as the tech goes: it looks interesting, but safe the "we are making the world a better place" part.


Gasoline when burned emits 2.3kgs of CO2 One can confidently assume 1.5 liters per nautical mile for an 8 meter petrol boat at speeds above 20 knots. That's 3450 grams per NM.

Our boats consume roughly 1 kwh per NM, from the grid. Swedish electricity generation emits about 15g of CO2 per kWh. That's even better than 99%.

Even in the US, in 2013, with 500g of CO2 per kWh, the emissions from a Candela are still 85% lower. And at least 99% lower locally in the water where the boat is being used.

It would be fantastic if all boating was done by sails, but saying that's the solution is like saying Tesla shouldn't have innovated on the automobile because there is already a technology for moving around on roads: bikes.

Do you suggest that nothing should be done about emissions on the water?


> at speeds above 20knots

maybe speed is a problem here. and if you are slow, it's a lot less.

Also burning at least 50€ (I'm not sure about tax exemptions for nautical fuel, but in Europe 1.5€/l is very likely) for a short trip of ~30km back and forth (which you could hike in a day - though not on water) underlines that whatever you consider "boating, the mass hobby" is something done (to great environmental cost) by a very, very small minority.

And yes I'm all for taxing the people with enough money to burn today so that they won't have to do that tomorrow - and reducing emissions of global sea trade as well.


There are 1 million leisure boats in Norway, with 5,4m inhabitants. So not exactly just for a very, very small minority..


motorized leisure boats over 8m going 20knots. I doubt that.


People need to enjoy the outdoors in order to care about preserving it.


do you really "enjoy outdoors" with a speedboat"? A simple sailing boat has a fraction of the foodprint and you probably can see a lot more of the outdoors. Will you spot wildlife at the coast riding this: probably not.


Sure, if you can catch any wind.


maybe that's also an important lesson for some people to learn. man is not almighty and part of a complex ecosystem.


Tesla started with Tesla Roadster (old version)


and now they have their 2 metric tonnes driving batteries consuming coal. Whew. Maybe we should think about systemic change.


There is nothing half so much worth doing as messing about in boats.

Mostly, that's throwing money into a hole in the water, but...


Ok. They put an electric motor on a hydrofoil. Where is the innovation? This isn't new stuff. Anyone can buy a hydrofoil hull and install an electric motor. The limitation always was, and remains, the wild impracticality inherent to hydrofoils regardless of power source.


Hey Sandworm. Candela here.

Sure, it's perfectly doable to put hydrofoils on any type of hull, especially passive hydrofoils. We tried, and it wasn't especially nice, nor efficient.

The trick is to use fully submerged ones. But those are much harder to keep stable, as they are inherently unstable. That's were our secret sauce is. We can control them through software similar to what you see in drones. Also, we've created the mechanical and structural components necessary for wave handling.

You won't find this type of innovation, especially the software, in any other boat in production. That's the new stuff.


how bout a gas version for us poor folk? Given the increased efficiency, it wouldn't need a big motor?

or would the software installed in one of the many sailboat designs using foils prevent their high accident rate?>


So your 8m boat's sea handling abilities are dependant on software? That's a big leap.


Why are hydrofoils inherently impractical?

The homepage claims superior ride and comfort in bad sea states.

Although hydrofoils are limited to about 400 tons, apparently, there have been several successful naval missile boats used by both sides in the Cold War.

Wings in ground effect is another thing that’s cool.


>> Why are hydrofoils inherently impractical?

Limitations on sea states. This gets dangerous when the waves very suddenly start striking the hull. The hull doesn't impact the bottom of the wave but mid-wave, slamming into it in a way a normal hull never would. Limitations on cargo capacity (too heavy and it won't 'fly') which is why large hydrofoils are normally limited to passenger services. Increased draft at low speeds (ie when not flying). Moving parts below the waterline are always a fouling hazard. When that delicate foil hits something it doesn't end well. Outboard engines are mounted in a way to survive such events by folding backwards. A lifting foil cannot do that.

These all lead to a dangerous senerio. Say you are driving a hydrofoil in increasingly bad conditions. Because you are 'flying' slightly above the waves you don't notice that they are getting worse. Then one slams into the hull at full speed, or something breaks, and you can no longer 'fly'. The non-foil boat would have turned back long ago, but because you were flying above most of the waves you are now deep into a situation your craft was never meant to handle.


> The homepage claims superior ride and comfort in bad sea states.

For a limited definition of bad sea states--the FAQ says the limit before you might unexpectedly land is about 1m wave height, which wouldn't be a serious issue for an ordinary boat almost 8m in length [1].

That said, I do think there's a place for hydrofoils on sheltered bodies of water. There is (or was, 10 years ago) a regular hydrofoil ferry service that runs between Petrozavodsk and the island of Kizhi [2], which cuts travel time dramatically compared to a traditional ferry.

[1] https://www.rms.nsw.gov.au/maritime/safety-rules/before-boat...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kizhi_Pogost


Condor Ferries used to run hydrofoils between the Channel Islands, the UK and France. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condor_Ferries. However they retired their last hydrofoil in 1993.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJLnJx9SzR8

https://thesarnian.com/guernsey-history/condor-1-hydrofoil-f...

I went on one once. It was disappointing. Going above decks was no longer allowed, so it was a bit like a very bumpy airplane ride with everyone sitting in their seats and nervously eyeing the sick-bags.


Unless it changed recently, there is a regular hydrofoil line linking Vienna to Bratislava on the Danube. I rode it in 2015, it's a wonderfully kitsch piece of Soviet era kit, but does this beast fly!


I rode one 20 years ago to islands off the coast of Greece. One of the trips was rough though due to choppy seas. I recall seatbelts were required and barf bags were utilized by a few passengers.


At sea, sure, but on a large river like the Danube it'extremely smooth, hardly any wave :)


Every hit the wake from a larger boat? That a river is generally flat doesn't mean that you won't occasionally hit a freak wave.


Regardless of type of boat, waves need to be considered and managed. Most of the time speed needs to be reduced. The same for Candela, when a wave is to high it works to operate just like a regular boat.


Rode one between HK and Macao. Turbine driven, airplaine seat with seat belt fasten !!


Thanks for finding that. A 1m wave height limit makes it basically useless in the North Pacific.


This is like the "how hard would it be to clone Dropbox" comment. Everything looks easy at first glance, the devil is in the details. Boat manufacturers work on relatively small R&D budgets too, there are usually only a few engineers involved. I'm sure there are hundreds of startups that are going no where but spend more on engineering than these guys.


To move 1.300kg of vehicle to transport 100-500kg of meat is not a prospect that makes sense. I also doubt the boat will handle well with 5 adults.

Show me an electric (or dead-trees powered for that matter) boat made for one person that can foil or at least plane and maybe I'll be interested.

For reference I made this bike which weighs the same as the person it transports and has batteries that last 10 years for $300 at almost the same range/speed, the bike including everything is $3.000 so 100x cheaper:

https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=&sl=auto&tl=en&u=h...


Hey Bullen, we do fine with 10 people on board. Check this video: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1149405105441917

Do you also think that a Tesla Model 3, transporting 5 adults, but weighing in at above 1500kg is a bad idea?


Yes, to produce enough electricity that everyone can have their tesla/candela is impossible because we are running out of cheap dead trees.

Electricity is not an energy source.

EROEI is already below 10 on the dead trees we use today (down from 100 a century ago, that's 10x or 1000% down).

And you need dead-trees to build nuclear and hydro. Solar and wind are useless.

A weight ratio of equal between transport (including energy storage) and transported is the only solution.

Personally I find the half weight of lithium to not compensate for the complexity/price, so I recommend lead-acid.


Not fully sure what dead trees have to do with anything?

Can you expand on what you mean by dead-trees are needed for nuclear and hydro?

And can you expand on what you mean by solar and wind are useless?

Based on what I've seen EROEI seems to be for wind, solar not so much due to product costs, but wind seems to be above the 7 threshold.


Dead trees = coal, oil and gas.

Solar and wind are not something you can decide when you want it and the EROEI is only ok if you subvention the manufacturing and/or grid with dead-trees, when you look at it from a system perspective they are utterly useless.

The numbers only look good through the debt lens.

Both solar and wind have very short lifespans.


Can you sail with it? Exactly how are bikes relevant on a boat thread?


I can give you a first hand account of riding along in this boat in the next couple of weeks or so, a buddy of mine is getting his delivered tomorrow.




Consider applying for YC's Spring batch! Applications are open till Feb 11.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: