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Are plastic pontoons a realistic option for the future?

Nope
 
Website indicates that some users leave them in frozen water with no damage. Not sure I would risk my pontoon, but they must be durable. In MN, we are seeing floating dock systems made of plastic left in the water / ice year around.
 
Some marinas here also use the floating docks . They used them at our previous marina. I don't care for them ,not at all stable.
 
I see it as a fad in fabrication idea. Still not going to compete with smooth aluminum.

As for leaving anything in frozen lakes, including plastic floating docks or plastic tubed boats, I think it really depends on the lake. Small ones, light freezes, no serious moving huge blocks of ice, sure…maybe…. Large lakes with thick ice that then gets broken and moved seasonally at thaw, nope. That sort of lake ice would just rip most things apart.
 
I saw one of these last year on our lake, a Sea-Doo Switch Pontoon Boat. The toons are made of Poly-Tec, a plastic material. The future will tell. Who knows? But, nothing looks better than those brightly shinning aluminum toons that I start off with each season.
 
There are 1-2 of those Switch’s on our lake this past year. The Poly-Tec in theory is supposed to be cost effectively patchable/repairable. But they also cause more friction and resistance, thus holding back performance. But time will tell - probably depending on production costs and environmental impact.

I know I would rather have a traditional fiberglass hull on my newer Sea Doo GTI because it runs slower with its Poly-Tec hull than it would with an older fiberglass Sea Doo hull. My 180 runs about the same (or slightly less) than the former 155’s on the GTI’s (which is the norm now). I’d hate to see similar situations with pontoon boats.
 
i think the reality is that for it to take off, it would need to be advantageous in one or more ways...
  • more durable
  • cheaper
  • more performance
  • style/looks
  • environmental impact
essentially, something that marketing can latch onto to sell more boats...

my thoughts:
  • more durable - unknown... reparability is about the same. plastic and aluminum can both be repaired just fine. depending on the engineering involved, either option can be the "more durable" option. good luck hanging a motor/transom directly on it. you'll need rigging that is incorporated to handle the stress.
  • cheaper - doubtful. manufacturing that large requires roto-molding (generally speaking), and tooling is expensive compared to using aluminum. Need a lot of volume to pay for the tooling, and boats are low volume products. to make the plastic as/more durable than aluminum it needs to be thick, hence heavy. probably heavier than the aluminum equivalent in durability. at best, this one is a wash
  • more performance - as mentioned, the aluminum is going to be more hydrodynamic, and can be polished for an even lower friction surface. good luck with the plastic. weight won't likely be much different, so those factors together say the performance is in favor of the aluminum.
  • style/looks- meh? to each their own, but i like shiny metal things... ;)
  • environmental impact - probably can't sell plastic as the future unless you're this guy:
  • iu
 
1. That had to be one of the cheesiest videos I’ve ever seen.
2. I can’t believe I actually watched it and will never recoup those 4 minutes of my life.
 
Amen
 
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