Can I buy an electric boat in Australia?

However, while electric cars have come a long way even in the last five years, the pace of development for electric cars has fallen well behind.

The reason for this is the way boats move through water compared with how cars move along a road. 

In a boat, the most efficient way of moving quickly across water is to bring the hull up on the plane. This allows the boat to ride up over its own bow wave, reducing the amount of hull in the water and in turn, the amount of drag the hull creates from its contact with the water.

In theory, then, a boat is always climbing uphill when it moves fast, a hugely energy-sapping effort. By comparison, a car spends part of its time going uphill, some of its time along flat ground, and some of its time going downhill. It’s this ability to go downhill, or even slow down that allows electric cars to recover some of the energy they used via a process called regenerative braking.

Boats don’t have brakes.

One of the big benefits of an electric motor over a conventional engine is that it produces almost all its torque as soon as it starts to spin. That means that the motors can spin larger props so that even the smallest electric outboard motors in the market will push boats weighing up to 1.5 tonnes.

But what if you just had to have an electric boat? We look at a few options you have to jump onboard the electric revolution the next time you head out on the water.

There are a number of marine companies that specialise in making electric motors that can be used to power a boat. 

Most of them are optimised for boats that don’t need much performance, such as smaller sailboats, RIBs and small fibreglass or aluminium dinghies.

However, some specialise in powering larger boats, with either outboard or inboard motors available. 

Names such as ePropulsion, Torqueedo and even Australian start-up Eclass Outboards all offer outboard motors or even in the case of Eclass, kits to convert an older outboard engine into a battery-powered motor.

At the moment, ePropulsion offers only a single 1kW electric outboard motor in Australia priced from around $3700.

Power Equipment, which sells the range of Torqueedo outboard motors ranging from 2.2kW tiller steer and pod drive motors right up to a 50kW forward-control outboard, and Deep Blue inboard motors ranging from 25kW to 100kW.

Prices for the Torqueedo range start from $3960 for the 2.2kW Travel 1103C – that drops down to $3472 with Power Equipment’s special cashback offer.

NSW-based Eclass specialises in converting old two-stroke petrol outboard engines into battery-powered versions. It is also offering conversion kits so people can make the change themselves.

The current range of conversions extends from 4.0kW to 30.0kW with prices starting from $6400 for a converted 8.0hp motor, and $3900 for the battery to power it.

Mainstream outboard engine maker Mercury has recently jumped on board the electric revolution releasing a new range of outboard motors under its own brand, Avator.

The Avator motors revealed so far include the highly portable tiller-steer 7.5e with a hot-swap battery that drops inside the casing, and more recently the 20e and 35e that come in the choice of tiller or forward steer, but use a separate battery system. Power equivalents with traditional outboard engines range from 3.0hp up to 9.9hp.

Only the Avator 7.5e is on sale at the moment, priced from around $5700, with the larger motors due on sale in Australia by the end of the year. Bigger motors with more performance are also on the horizon.

The benefit of all these options is it also gives you choice in terms of what it will power, so all you do is buy a new or used boat that suits your needs, fit the motor and hit the water.

No one really sells an electric boat in Australia that you can walk up and buy straight off the showroom floor. It’s still very much a niche market, so you’ll be ordering and waiting.

Options range from a Zodiac eOpen RIB, basically an inflatable tender for a motor yacht, up to a Greenline cruiser that you can fit with a fully customised all-electric drivetrain.

If you’re ordering a boat, you can get something like the Frauscher 610 San Remo, a 6.1-metre runabout optimised for a day on the water. Featuring teardrop gunwales that flare wide at the bow but then cut in the further aft you go, it's a blend of modern building techniques with classic finishes.

The boat is available with electric pod-drive motors ranging from 4.3kW to 15.0kW, and with battery packs made up of up to four 6.0kWh lithium-ion units.

These Austria-built are not cheap, and Australian distributor Premier Marine does not stump prices for the 610 San Remo on its website. As a guide, a similar-sized Frauscher listed on the website with a conventional 300hp inboard engine costs around $700,000.

Top speed from the 15kW version of the Frauscher 610 San Remo is around 13.0 knots, so it’s relatively slow. If you're not going to move fast then best look good doing it.

If you’re into sailing, newly formed lightweight boat specialist Carbon Yachts is introducing the Saffier Yachts SE 24 Lite to the Australian market.

This Dutch-made fully carbonfibre trailerable dayboat features a Torqueedo pod drive to do the shunt to and from the jetty, and to point into the wind to hoist the main.

The other option, if you don’t want to buy something new, is to have a scratch around on the used market.

There are a few options, including from Denmark-based brand Rand that specialises in good-looking dayboats that you can pull out of the water at day’s end and recharge for the next.

Be warned, though, as they’re not cheap; Rand builds its boats from highly expensive carbonfibre so even on the second-hand market they’re not quite within reach of an impulse buy.