Electric speed boats are a relatively new addition to the boating industry and are quickly shaking things up. With the release of the Arc One, a $300,000 all electric speedboat, is it worth it?
YouTuber Shelby Church decided to find out for herself by taking the Arc One out for a test spin. From the modern design to the advanced technology, the boat feels like an iPhone with its touchscreen display and wireless phone chargers. The boat, which measures 24 feet from bow to stern, has two large battery packs that not only store energy, but also support the structure of the boat.
After taking the boat out for a test drive, Shelby was blown away by its speed. The all electric boat zipped across the water at 35 mph, and the experience was surprisingly quiet, much like driving an electric car. However, all this advanced technology comes at a steep price of $300,000, far more expensive than other boats in the same price range.
While the cost is due to the expensive production of the boat, including the large battery power needed to operate it, there are also potential savings to be had in terms of fuel costs and maintenance. With electric boats consuming less energy than gas-powered boats and the ease of charging at marinas, the Arc One offers a more environmentally friendly and potentially more cost-effective option for boaters.
Overall, electric speed boats are offering a new and exciting alternative to traditional gas-powered boats, and the Arc One is at the forefront of this shift in the industry. While the price may be high, the advanced technology and potential savings in the long run make it a worthwhile consideration for boating enthusiasts.
Watch the video by Shelby Church
So we’re at 30 30 mph 35 wow oh my God would you guys believe me if I told you this was an all electric boat that I’m on because it is this is the ark1 an all electric boat that is really shaking up things in the boat industry electric
Boats have been around now since the’80s but in a limited way you may have seen these Duffy Boats before that are all electric but they certainly cannot handle the ocean waters I think when people think of electric boats today they think of the small duffies which
Are great boats for going 2 or 3 m an hour on on the water it’s a much different challenge to go make those higher power boats Duffy Boats just don’t have the power to go out in the ocean in LA and they’re not a good alternative for people that want some
Speed the ark1 is a real alternative option to a speedboat and just take a look at it it’s a very modern approach to an old school hobby driving around this thing feels like an iPhone it’s got the touchscreen the white interior seats very similar to electric cars that you
See these days it’s noticeable different than the other boats out there this is a 24t boat measured bow all the way to the end of the swim platform the layout of this boat is that there are two battery packs underneath the floor right now there’s one under my feet here and one
Under where the captain sits those battery packs are each larger than anything that you’d find in an electric sedan today and importantly they support the floor of this boat they are providing value outside of just storing energy they’re actually supporting the the structure of the boat itself and
Then there’s a motor that sits in between it other featur all of these seats hinge up to provide storage we have wireless phone chargers throughout the cabin of the boat a pop-up ski pylon for anyone that wants to wakeboard or inner tube or water ski behind the boat a touchscreen display
That has everything from navigation maps to a rear view camera and obviously awesome music we took the boat out for a test drive to see how it did is there a seat belt no I’m kidding life jacket go for it yeah okay W okay
Wow so we’re at 30 30 mph 35 wow oh my God and I was blown away this thing can go very fast and it’s very easy for a beginner like me to drive around if you go like try to just absolutely pin the throttle on a gas boat what you often do
Is flood the engine with gas what that’s doing is it’s opening a valve and releasing a lot of gas really rapidly and the engine can’t keep up with that again here you can just pin that Throttle Down and it’s going to do exactly the right thing to accelerate
You and make sure you’re having a good time one thing you notice is this boat is so quiet you hardly notice it’s on kind of like an electric car which is really nice it’s very pleasant you can actually chat and hear each other when you go fast it is louder but it’s really
The wind noise more than anything that makes it loud up here you don’t have the wind on you so it’s like it’s really chill from my test drive on the boat I was really impressed with everything that it has to offer but all this technology comes at a price $300,000 to
Be exact very steep considering the size of this boat take a look at other boats for sale in the same price range you’re going to get a full yacht but you’re going to have a lot more maintenance expenses on those boats there are all these sayings in the Marine industry
About how like the best day of a boat owner’s life for the day you buy it and the day you sell it yeah I’ve heard that one it’s because they’re a maintenance headache and our boats are far more reliable similar to an electric car when you switch out an engine that’s really
Complicated like look at all these parts in this engine for a battery you eliminate a lot of potential problems I’ve had an electric car for just about 5 years and I’ve had no maintenance no oil changes none of that so the same should be true for a boat however
Realistically anything that’s sitting in saltwater 24/7 is going to have some maintenance you’re not going to have all of it eliminated but in theory this should be a lot more reliable than a gas boat the ark1 is very expensive for a few reasons it’s not just because they
Can it’s because these boats are quite expensive to produce in large part due to the fact that they need a lot of battery power and batteries are expensive boats generally speaking require a lot of power because they’re moving through water rather than air that means that you need a really
Powerful motor but it also means that you need to store a lot of energy on the boat to actually be able to use your boat for a while most boats today do that with really big gas tanks for us the challenge is how do you go do that
With really large battery packs the battery packs that are on the ark1 are significantly larger than anything that you would see in say an electric sedan uh your average electric sedan has a battery pack that’s 60 kwatt hours this is 220 kwatt hourss so it’s it’s multiple times four times three to four
Times larger exactly exactly and that’s because boats in general gas or electric take a ton of energy to move through water most people don’t know this but boats consume more gas than a fully loaded semi- TR cuz the water so much hard exactly I mean think about when you
Swim in a pool it takes so much more energy to move from point A to point B in water than if you were to walk that distance and the same is true for boats takes a lot of energy so you need a lot of battery power that translates to a
Lot of fuel costs and when you suddenly go over to you know an electric power train your fuel costs Dro by a factor of 10 yeah let’s talk about charging the cool thing is a lot of marinas already have electricity wired into their dock for liveaboard boats charging is a much
Easier problem to solve than it is for electric cars which want to you want to hop in your electric car and go anywhere in the country with a boat they tend to start and end at the same place which makes charging a little easier but also
The marinas out here tend to be already be wired for the type of power that you would use to recharge this look around a lot of the larger marinas and there are Outlets all over the place I mean remember when I made that video with
Bryce he showed me how they got power to their boat this is pretty common anywhere that has liveboard permits for boats it’s nice that in most cases you don’t need to get anything installed like you would for an electric vehicle and you don’t need to go to Marina gas
Stations so the experience that you have as a boater is you use your boat exactly how you want to use it 3 4 5 hours out on the water with your friend you come back you plug it in you walk away and the next morning it is fully charged and
Ready to go again for you speaking of charge this battery will last you 3 to 5 hours of boating depending on how fast you’re going of course the faster you drive around the fast you’re going to kill the battery if you’re just slowly cruising around a marina it’s going to
Last you pretty much all day this is definitely a con that it maxes out at around 5 hours because of course gas boats can potentially go out on the water for a lot longer but I actually think 3 to 5 hours is a good compromise because any longer and the price would
Of course be even higher that’s pretty crazy that’s crazy as you can imagine building an electric boat does come with some unique challenges one of them being that the batteries are super heavy so then you need to compensate for the fact that you have thousands of pounds of battery
Sitting on this boat you need to take that weight out of something else and that’s where the aluminum hole on the arc1 and and kind of our manufacturing techniques on future boats comes in the aluminum hole is perfect for taking off some of that weight but it does come at
A cost what is a boat typically made out of of this size they’re usually made out of fiberglass and that’s heavier it’s it’s heavier particularly the type of fiberglass that’s used there’s some Nuance in there but that type of fiberglass tends to be heavy not very efficient when it comes to how much
Strength you get for a given amount of weight of it but it’s very you know cheap to make it’s uh you don’t need very high skill labor to do it whereas something like this yeah it’s more challenging to manufacture the ark1 was their first product and they’ve actually
Sold out of all 20 of these boats that they’ve created and they’re now moving on to a different product if you view the ark1 as our Roadster the next model is kind of our model S in the sense that it’s still targeting a premium segment of the market but is again intended for
Mass Market audiences in a way that the ark1 was not the ark1 overall my thoughts very impressive very powerful but very expensive it reminds me of when electric cars were new the first ever Roadster was you know $200,000 and now we have electric cars closer to $330,000 so the price for an
Electric boat eventually will probably come down but we’re just still in the early days of it I don’t think it’s going to come down that much though considering how much battery power you need need to move through water I mean it’s the equivalent of buying battery packs for four electric sedans so kind
Of tough to get the price down on that unless we have some newer Battery Technology there are other companies working on electric boats or just electric motors though there’s one in Seattle called purecraft and they have an electric motor that you can put on what’s originally a gas boat you can
Switch out the motor for this and it’s a lot less expensive with two battery packs it’s closer to $3 or $40,000 it looks like it’s not as powerful as the ark1 but a lot more affordable and great if you’re just slowly cruising around a lake I love to see that companies are
Working on this because boating while it’s not necessary and it is a luxury it’s something that people are still going to do and it is a huge environment polluter the fact that driving a speedboat is equivalent to a semi TR it takes a lot of energy maintenance
Headache of gas boats just seemed like they’re not a great product so I’m all for electric boats I think they are the future but it’s going to be a while before the price is really realistic for most people I’m going to keep my eye on these companies let me know what you
Guys thought of the arc one comment down below and I will see you guys in my next video bye
Video “I Tried The $300,000 All Electric Speedboat. Is it worth it?” was uploaded on 01/20/2024. Watch all the latest Videos by Shelby Church on Gretopia