Arc Boat Company, a new high-tech company with heavy duty Silicon Valley funding, is now selling a 24-foot, 40-mph, all-electric boat powered by a 200kWh battery. The company is taking orders for the new Arc One, costing $300,000, with the first boat scheduled for delivery by the end of the year.
So far, Arc, based in Los Angeles, has ten employees. All but one of them, CEO Mitch Lee, have worked for SpaceX, Elon Musk’s space exploration company. Lee founded the company with Ryan Cook; they studied mechanical engineering together at Northwestern University, and then went on to work at Boeing, before Cook went on to SpaceX.
Lee says the SpaceX experience applies to electric because they both “specialize in making very lightweight structures.” The Arc One has a custom aluminum hull that incorporates the battery packs as structural members of the boat. The batteries will be built in house.
Arc is backed by seed money from Andreesen Howowitz, early backers of Facebook and Airbnb. Arc is basing its growth on the Tesla model, using money from investors and early sales to finance R&D that produces breakthrough technology to power future growth.
Lee is optimistic about the future of electric boats, saying they “will be quicker, quieter and way cheaper and easier to operate and maintain” than diesel- or gas-powered boats. Electric boats now account for less than 2 percent of powerboat sales, but Lee predicts that in ten or 15 years they will account for almost all new powerboat sales.
As technology improves, the cost of an electric boat will come down, while battery life will improve, giving the boats more speed and range and making them attractive alternatives to fossil-fuel boats across a wide range of boat sizes and types. Read more:
