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180 HP Electric outboard engine

Eagle 1

Eagle 1

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Has Bennington ever considered attaching a 180 HP totally electric outboard engine to one of its pontoon boats?  A company from British Columbia, Canada, called Campion makes a 180 HP totally electric outboard engine called the Chase 550 E Fusion outboard.  The following website has a video of how quiet this engine is.  Reportedly, this engine can push this boat to 45 MPH for two hours and be recharged in 8 hours.  I would love to have test driven a Bennington Pontoon boat with this engine.




David
 
8 hours for 2 hours. That's like paying $50k for 5 minutes with Jennifer Lopez...... Too much energy built up for too little time.
 
SEMPERFI8387 said:
8 hours for 2 hours. That's like paying $50k for 5 minutes with Jennifer Lopez...... Too much energy built up for too little time.
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Do you remember when she started out on "In Living Color "? One of the Fly Girls . :p
 
The future of boating!
 
Electric Pontoon boats

Electric Pontoons are the fastest growing segment of the ever increasing Pontoon boat marketplace.

electric-pontoon-boat-24557-191611.jpg


The technology continues to grow !!
 
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Price and weight are hurdles...but I agree - the future of boating.

Most people don't spend much time thinking about how using electricity as their energy of choice, would impact their actual usage. People are so accustomed to how they use gasoline, that they refuse to consider how electricity could possibly work. Since I drive an electric car (with a gas generator backup...Chevy Volt), I'm personally very aware how much folks could benefit from going electric and how many incorrect assumptions are made about electricity as a transportation fuel.

The beauty of electricity as fuel...

Know what happens to the price of electricity when a hurricane hits the Gulf? Nothing.

And know what happens to the price of electricity when Saudi Arabia caves to OPEC and cuts production? Nothing.

And know what happens to the price of electricity when a drilling platform explodes in the Gulf, killing 11 people and decimating entire ecosystems with 210 million gallons of oil leaked into the ocean? Correct again...nothing happens to the price of electricity.

The magic of the Chevy Volt and BMW I3 vs all of the other electric cars is simple, and easy to apply to boats. They are both electric propulsion systems - super simple - rotor - stator - copper windings. No transmission to speak of. Reliable beyond anything we can relate to. But they both have gasoline powered generators on board than can produce enough electricity to power the electric motors once the battery is drained. When the gas generator runs out of gas - you add more gas and continue merrily on your way.

This would be an epic application on boats someday. For the evening cruise puttering around the lake for a couple of hours - battery only. When its time to tube...battery only until its empty...then gas generator fires up and you finish out your day like anyone else ever would. I bet that 75% of boating hours on a boat like this, would be done on electricity. In my car - 80% of my driving is done on battery. Only 20% with the generator running. In The first 30,000 miles on my car, I burned only 200 gallons of gasoline...averaging 150mpg. It's not free to drive on electricity, and it wouldn't be free to boat on electricity either. But where electric motors shine is efficiency. Locomotives have used electric motors to power the wheels for decades. Why? Efficiency. An electric motor is roughly 80% efficient at turning energy into motive force. Only 20% of the energy is wasted to heat and other parasitic loads. Gas engines are roughly 18% efficient at turning energy into motive force. So for every 100 units of energy in gasoline - you only get 18 units at the shaft (prop or wheel). For every 100 units of energy in to an electric motor - you get about 80 units at the shaft (prop or wheel). 

In my car - the cost to buy 10kWh of electricty is $1.45. I can go roughly 45 miles on that $1.45. To go 45 miles with the generator running costs $2.00 (40mpg on gas...gas at $1.89/gal). When gas is $1.89/gallon, it costs me $1.45 for the electricity. When gas is $2.89 per gallon, it still costs me $1.45 for the electricity. When gas is $3.75 a gallon, it still costs me $1.45 in electricity. If it should happen that gas becomes cheaper than electricity - I can just switch the car to run on gas. When electricity is cheaper, I can run on electricity. It's an incredible piece of engineering and could easily be applied to boats. Someday. Someday. Someday.
 
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I own a Low Speed Vehicle it is really a Street Legal Golf Cart

I have to say I love it 

It is quiet and goes further on a full charge than I ever imagined

I am an advocate for Electricity as a power source

With Natural Gas as the new energy source for Power Plants the Carbon Foot Print goes down significantly

109961069.jpg
 
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JeffS,

  Not to start a pi**ing match, just for questions sake, but have you factored in the "extra" cost for the electric vehicle up front vs. gas only? The cost of replacement batteries (what's life span?) The cost to dig the coal to produce that electric (fuel for loaders,diggers,dump trucks) ,refine it (plant machinery/employees),ship it (train), burn it(plant production, maintenance), and not to mention the disposal of flyash. OR, the cost to build & maintain a nuclear reactor plant. (I live near TMI)

These are the "hidden cost"  both financial and environmental that should be factored in to the $1.45 ...... it may not come directly from your pocket, but it comes from someones pocket.

Just questions to ponder ....... and openly discuss......  :)

I live near a coal power plant, and I see the mountain of ash piling up bigger & bigger. I actually believe they are trying to figure out how to use it mixed into blacktop for highway paving, and also concrete block production, so there is a possible benefit to the waste, but it's still there as of now.
 
SEMPERFI8387 said:
JeffS,

  Not to start a pi**ing match, just for questions sake, but have you factored in the "extra" cost for the electric vehicle up front vs. gas only? The cost of replacement batteries (what's life span?) The cost to dig the coal to produce that electric (fuel for loaders,diggers,dump trucks) ,refine it (plant machinery/employees),ship it (train), burn it(plant production, maintenance), and not to mention the disposal of flyash. OR, the cost to build & maintain a nuclear reactor plant. (I live near TMI)

These are the "hidden cost"  both financial and environmental that should be factored in to the $1.45 ...... it may not come directly from your pocket, but it comes from someones pocket.

Just questions to ponder ....... and openly discuss......  :)

I live near a coal power plant, and I see the mountain of ash piling up bigger & bigger. I actually believe they are trying to figure out how to use it mixed into blacktop for highway paving, and also concrete block production, so there is a possible benefit to the waste, but it's still there as of now.
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 It's never a pissing match from me ever. No worries there. 

Part 1 - extra cost to buy the vehicle. I bought a $30,000 car. Lots of cars cost $30,000. So it wasn't extra at all to get electric. Had I not picked the Volt, I probably would have picked an IS250. But the Volt is a better car. It's a common straw-man argument saying the Volt is a Chevy Cruz with an electric motor. Sure, the underpinnings are the same - but the Volt is no more the same car as a Cruz, than a Lexus ES350 is the same car as the Camry. No one criticizes a Lexus driver for buying a Lexus. It's the same with the Volt. The luxuries that I opted to pass on included woodgrain colored plastics, some more deluxe dash styling, sitting on dead cows and cameras on the mirrors to show what I can see over my shoulder, on a screen in the center console. The luxury I opted for instead - stopping at the gas station every 2,000 - 3,000 miles and filling with only 8 gallons. I chose how to spend my $30k. I would have spent that amount...the Chevy Volt was just the absolute best car I could buy with the money I had to spend.

Part 2. Coal. I live in coal country. If you include the cost to mine the coal, you have to also include the cost to explore, find, drill, pump, store, transport, store, transport, store, refine, store, transport, store, truck, dump into a holding tank, and finally pump into your car...gasoline. It's another common strawman argument to say it's less catastrophic to the environment to pump gasoline into your car than it is to mine coal. That is strawman because it compares gasoline at the point of delivery to coal-fired-electricity at the point of extraction. Same with a nuclear power plant. How much does it cost to build a refinery? How much did it cost to "clean up" Deep Water Horizon? 

But my favorite argument for burning coal is simple. Go to a coal field in PA (where the midwest gets most of it's power-generating coal) and count the US Soldiers. There are somewhere right around none. Give or take a couple...it's pretty close to zero soldiers. Now do the same thing for the parts of the world that control the world's supply of oil. It's slightly more than none. US military casualties in the coal fields of PA (we might even call them sons and daughters for fun) is similarly right around zero. The US controls its own sources of coal. No other country has anything to say about our coal. That's not the case for oil. Trillions have been spent on oil wars. And that frustrates me. Thousands of died. That infuriates me. The technology exists right now, and is ready to go. It's way cheaper to subsidize the adoption of electric vehicles than it is to fight oil wars. Way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way cheaper. Plus there's that 'death' part. The total cost to the environment to drive an electric car is far lower than the cost to drive an ICE car (Internal Combustion Engine). Efficiency alone will prove this out. Plus most electric cars are charging on base load at night when power plants are spinning excess supply to the grid with no place to go. (it's worth noting...I'm not an environmentalist. I have a big Benny and my tow vehicle is a Ford Expedition. Assuming I have a small carbon footprint would be false. I'm anti big-oil, anti-opec, anti-politician-who-has-sold-out-to-big-oil-etc).

Final thought on point 2 - it's easy to follow the money. There are politicians that are beholden to big oil. They oppose the Chevy Volt at every turn. There are "news" networks that are beholden to politicians that are beholden to big oil. They oppose the Chevy Volt at every possible turn. Big oil treats the Chevy Volt like it is the plague. Because for them...it is. They pay big money on public relations campaigns that criticize electric cars. For them, it's life or death.

Point 3. Replacement batteries. Replacing the battery costs about $3,500 today. But I know of no Volts that have had to have the battery replaced. There are Volts on the road with 200,000 miles on them...running perfectly happily on their original battery. The engineering that went in to the battery systems of the Chevy Volt are no less than astounding. I can go into it if you are interested. But it gets pretty wonky. It's an amazing battery. And my whole plan includes driving the car for 150,000 miles, then parting it out but keeping the battery as storage for a solar array. I estimate I'll have about 13kWH capacity left on the 16kWh battery, and can install a solar array that charges that battery full during the day and runs the house (completely) at night. I'll decide when the time comes, if I want to back up my house with a NG Generator, or from the grid. Depends on legislation that is puttering through congress regarding penalizing homes that install solar (sponsored by none other than the utility companies that view solar as the plague...because for them...it is). 

Coal is going to slowly get phased out. By charging at night, I add nothing to the ash pile. There's a lot wrong with coal fired plants in that they can not be tapered below a specific base load. But as the years go by, new technology is coming on line and electricity is getting cleaner by default. That's the opposite of what happens as more and more ICE cars hit the road.

Point 4. Maintenance. This is fun so I left it for last. There really isn't much maintenance. I have 33,000 miles on my car today. Of those 33,000 miles, only 6,800 have been with the generator running. So from a gas engine standpoint, I have less than 7,000 miles on my car. I had the oil changed once. I have to change it every 2 years. The car has no transmission. It has no alternator. No power steering pump. No belts. The moving parts in an electric motor are...wait for it...it's a long list...rotor. That's it. A rotor spins around a stator in a field of current. That's the whole mechanism. Now...there are 2 electric motors in the car, with a pretty cool system of clutches that can make them run opposite (regenerative braking), one at a time, or together depending on load. So there are some moving parts there. But in all, it's super simple compared to a traditional ICE car and transmission. I figure my chances of having to replace a battery or electric motor in 150,000 miles is far less than an ICE car's chance of having to do a major engine or transmission repair. 

Some of the funner maintenance items...brakes. I don't know of a Volt anywhere that has had brake work done. The car has friction brakes like any other car, but I only use the friction brakes for about the last 8 feet of a stop. The rest is done with magnets - regenerating electricity to dump back in the battery when I slow or stop. The friction brakes are incredibly well engineered to last the life of the car without being used very much. Exhaust. Yeah...that system doesn't get used very much. Engine...over 80% of my driving is done with the engine off. So by the time my car has 150,000 miles on it, the engine will be up to 30,000 miles. We'll all probably agree that's a pretty young engine these days.

I'm very glad you asked the questions. This particular car is very possibly one of the greatest feats of American engineering in a really long time. It was thunked up by MURICA, it's built in MURICA and it's powered by fuel controlled by MURICANS! Doesn't get much better than that. In my opinion.  :)
 
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I must say, that was a good read and.....................you're funny!
 
Looks like I have something to read when I get home!
 
Ok, valid answers, and great points made. You've piqued my interest.

So if you let off the "throttle" does it still drift distance wise, like a regular car till you hit the brakes?

living off the grid intrigues me. I saw a generator made from an old alternator and radiator fan from a vehicle.

I'm thinking about doing something small like that, if only to provide power for ambient outdoor lighting at night.

I have almost constant 5mph plus winds off my back deck.

Thanks for opening my eyes to this alternate option.
 
Thanks SemperFi (and others). I'm a vocal advocate of the electrification of personal transportation. Your questions hit me in a spot where I have done a tremendous amount of reading and study. Thanks for reading my post.

Regarding letting off the throttle - the car has 2 modes. One where the car coasts like a traditional ICE car coasts. And a second mode where the car automatically goes into regenerative braking when the go pedal is released. I drive in the second mode 100% of the time. It takes a day or two of practice to get it down pat, but once you have it...you have it.  And it's far more efficient as it adds significantly to battery range with the regen kicking on faster than I can move my foot and touch the brake. It is also safer in an emergency situation.

I am looking forward to being self sufficient relative to electricity. My preference is to have solar backed up by my own natural gas generator rather than grid. It won't be cost prohibitive, but it won't be a "pays-for-itself-in-20-years" proposition either. It will be something I spend money on so I can prove it can be done. The model that is on the horizon is homeowners-groups sharing the purchase and operating costs of a single generator and having their own tiny 6-10 home electric co-op. No infrastructure. No transmission lines. Simple is always better than not-simple. Utility companies are fearful.
 
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This (the electric outboard) from a company that used to (and probably still does) make these:



 

That's a Chase 910 ZRi with a pair of Mercruiser 7.4L's. I bought it new in '96, it was a great 70+ mph boat.

 

NOT electric.  :)
 
I work for a regulated gas and electric utility. We actually get what coal we do burn from out west. Not as many btu's but it burns cleaner. We are going to be retiring some of our oldest coal plants to meet 2016 air quality standards. Many utilities will be doing the same and there will be a shortage very soon. Not sure how many electric boats and cars will be charging during rolling brown outs. I would see cng being a great fuel source. We have some vehicles that run on it. We also have numerous Volts in our company car program.

As for your mini grid Jeff I'm not sure if that will really take off. For starters some one has to either donate space or everyone has to pitch in to buy neighboring property to house generation space. The there is the capital investment needed, then sharing the expenses based on usage, then your omc costs. Then what happens when one neighbor isn't able to pay his bill? You pull their meter? and what happens when first st wants to be on the grid with 4th st and 2nd st wants to join 5's grid? You get multiple lines running all over the place. This has been attempted in the past and it did not work. And when your neighbors dead trees keep falling and taking out your power then what? That is where regulated utilities do the dirty work to ensure the lights stay on. And rates have to be approved. There is a lot that goes into generation, transmition and distribution of electricity.
 
I'd love to see a way to have CNG be a viable alternative. But the lack of infrastructure...to my eye...is a deal breaker. It would cost oil-war type money to convert our personal transportation fleet to CNG. Now OTR trucking...a national strategy to convert diesels to CNG or LNG would make sense to me. 

For personal transportation, I still strongly feel that electricity is the way to go. The simplicity of the motor is a huge benefit, and there are about 100 million charging stations around the country. Just about any plug can charge a car overnight. Not quickly...but a 15amp plug can safely load most cars with 1.2kWh's of electricity every hour. If you sleep 8 hours and take an hour to get ready in the morning, your standard garage outlet can deliver 10.8kWh's to the car in the time it takes you to sleep and eat breakfast. At 4 miles/kWh average, that's 43 miles of range before the car needs to kick over to gasoline. 43 miles without burning a drop of gasoline. Most people drive less than 43 miles per day...so for them...it's a complete conversion to electric. For those that drive more, they are still using a tiny percentage of the gasoline they normally would.

If we did that...and it's a big 'if'...then the desired reduction in carbon emissions can all be achieved at the tailpipe and not the smoke stack. Then we could leave the power generating companies alone. I advocate a national energy policy that promotes burning coal in our legacy plants, using gradually increasingly clean technology to generate electricity, and promotes wind-solar-nuclear for new plants coming on line. And gradually begins to penalize the future utilization of oil. Let's make electricity however we can. Promote and advocate rooftop solar - don't penalize it. Promote and advocate for coal (since we control it). For those that need to battle against carbon, set your sites on personal transportation. As I said before, the technology is here. It's ready to go. We just need to embrace it. Fewer people die. We stop sending so much money to nefarious kingdoms, we become more self sufficient, we employ more of our own countrymen, and ultimately our emissions go way down due to cars...not power plants.

But alas, that won't happen. I know it won't. Policy makers hit smoke stacks instead of tailpipes with their ire because there are a lot fewer of them to hit. It's short sighted and incorrect. Rolling black-outs? I'll defer to your expertise and assume that's a reality. But even with that, cars charge at night. Rolling power reductions come during peak demand, not slack demand. So I don't think that's a thing for cars or boats.

There are bullet proof answers to our energy issues out there. But there are corporate casualties to the solutions. Big oil for one. Public utilities for the other. And they have big lobbyists and lots of money. That's what's standing in the way of real solutions. Corporations and private wealth. It's frustrating.
 
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