Candela C-8 electric foiling boat 2024 Review

We’ve followed the rise of Candela with interest over the years as it grew from a small start-up to one of the most innovative and progressive-thinking electric boat companies worldwide.

Not content with disrupting just the way boats are built – it uses carbonfibre for its hulls to minimise weight and electronics to keep the boat up on the foils – it has designed and built its own electric pod drives.

The first boat out of the Swedish technology group was the 7.7-metre Candela C-7, capable of cruising up to 40 nautical miles at 22.0 knots– top speed is about 30.0 knots – and using a cyborg-inspired outboard engine pod – albeit driving a foil – on the stern.

The next generation is the boat we’re testing here, the 8.5-metre Candela C-8. It will do up to 57nm at 22.0kt, and an extra 4.0nm in limp-home mode that caps the speed at 4.0kt. It also has the next-generation retractable C-Foil system that uses a smaller form factor C-Pod electric pod drive rather than a conventional-looking electric outboard motor.

It’s due on sale soon for the first time in Australia via Carbon Yachts, a dealership set up exclusively to sell it and other specialist high-end carbonfibre sail and power boats.

Price and equipment

The Candela C-8 is not exactly cheap, priced from €330,000 ($A544,100) as either a Daycruiser split-console runabout or as a walkaround centre console. From there, you can add a range of accessories including a T-top for the centre console or a hardtop for the runabout.

The boat is fitted with a 69kWh battery. Supplying it is Swedish car-maker Polestar, who makes lithium-ion battery packs for its range of luxury electric vehicles.

The boat comes equipped with a 15.4-inch touchscreen hooked into a bespoke operating system for the boat. It means you’re locked into using Candela’s in-house navigation and boat integration system. You’ll need to subscribe to annual chart updates.

Because the boat is fully electronic, any software tweaks made in the factory to improve the boat’s battery life or performance can wirelessly roll out to your boat.

The list price does not include a charger, so you will need to work out a recharging solution. A top-up via a conventional garage-mounted AC electric car charger will take about 6.5 hours to fully charge an empty battery, while a rapid DC charger will take about 35 minutes to bump the battery from 10 percent up to 80 percent.

Even if you ordered one today, pent-up demand for the C-8 means the first deliveries worldwide are unlikely to happen until early- to mid-2025. It is currently the best-selling electric boat in Europe and has notched up 170 sales globally.

Hull and engineering

Candela’s design for the C-8 has two objectives. The first is to make a strong, lightweight hull optimised for an electric drivetrain. The second is to create a hull with a low aerodynamic drag to generate as little air resistance as possible while up on the foils.

And because the foils can retract, the boat effectively rides on two hulls – a larger one with a deep vee forward, and a smaller aft one. The hull ends well before the transom to make room for the electric pod drive.

The reason behind the split hull is to give the Candela C-8 some rough-weather capability. If the waves are too high for foiling, you can retract the foil into the hull and drive the boat at planing speeds of up to 20kt.

Because the foils can fully retract, you also can bump this boat up on the beach. A shallow mode will lift the pod drive into the gap between the aft section of the hull and the transom, slightly above the level of the keel, as well as retract the forward foil. A harbour setting will tuck the electric pod away right up under the transom so there is minimal risk of the foil snagging on something.

Candela says the C-8’s hull is made using vacuum-infused carbonfibre composite to make it exceptionally lightweight yet remarkably rigid and durable. The frames and stringers inside the hull are also made from carbonfibre.

Design and layout

Because most of the fittings and features, including the seats, are made from carbonfibre to keep the vessel’s weight low, physical options are expensive and limited.

We tested the Candela C-8 DC runabout fitted with a hardtop, the latter adding €15,000 to the price, while white or black exterior finishes are no-cost options. Features such as rub rails (€3900), a toilet in the front cabin (€2900), swim platform (€7800) or cockpit table (€1800) don’t come cheap.

Our test boat included a radar option (€4900) taking the total price to a snip less than €350,000, which works out to around $575,000 in local coin.

You can check out all the options via the Candela C-8 configurator tool, which can include a trailer.

The hardtop features a manually operated sliding roof section that keeps things a little less blustery in the cold weather but would be great on Aussie waterways, either letting the sun in or providing shade.

Everything topside is reasonably well laid out, with three partially swivelling seats to keep the skipper company, behind which is a double-sided soft bench that’ll seat another three or four passengers comfortably. The rear-facing section of the bench doubles as a sunbed.

There were five of us on board shooting video and exploring the boat’s features, meaning things got a little gridlocked moving around the rear bench seat. But overall the layout works if occupants are patient and communicate their movements.

There’s also a retractable swim ladder aft and a surprisingly roomy forward cabin with comfortable bench seats providing concealed storage, integrated lighting and a small rooftop hatch. Extra cushions transform the cabin into sleeping quarters, with more than enough room for two slumbering bodies.

Candela has (unsurprisingly) adopted a super-simple Swedish helm layout for the C-8, with a single multifunction touchscreen controlling the boat’s entire suite of electronics. The touchscreen's interface pays homage to the boat’s battery donor, the Polestar 2 five-door hatchback, and the easy-to-understand and navigate menu systems even use the same fonts as the car.

The furniture behind the console is again very Swedish in its execution, the three front seats being simple but visually pleasing. There’s bugger-all padding, though – perhaps that was intentional given the boat delivers ultra-smooth cruising once up and foiling.

There are no armrests for the skipper and incidental storage around the 15.4-inch touchscreen is meagre, with a few beverage holders and a handful of lidded tubs.

There are ample grab handles, but not that you’ll really need them because this thing is magic carpet-smooth.

On the water

We tested the Candela C-8 on Stockholm Harbour in Sweden in cold, wintery conditions with relatively benign winds. In this environment, the Candela C-8 is a doddle to control.

There are no special requirements or extra reading needed to pilot this boat compared with a conventional petrol or diesel-powered rig – just push the throttle control forward and off you go.

The Candela C-8 bumps along on its conventional hull on ruffled water with a bit of hull thudding but when its reaches around 17 knots the hydrofoils take effect, the hull riseing up in about two seconds, give or take.

And as Darryl Kerrigan from the classic Aussie movie The Castle would say: “How’s the serenity?”

Not only is the sensation of the hull rising by close to 1.5 metres smooth and seamless, the ambient sounds of the hull slapping the water are also gone. Noise is replaced with a subtle swooshing sound that has everyone in the Candela looking at each other wide-eyed.

The near silence that follows is best described as blissful, with conversation flowing more freely than the water along the mighty Murray.

If your senses are attuned to regular boating, the first few minutes of foiling feel surreal until your brain can come to terms with exactly what’s happening.

Steering the Candela C-8 is effortless as it cuts into the water and leans into the turn. The way it glides is very satisfying.

There’s slightly more lag between turning the wheel and the vessel responding than a conventional combustion engine boat’s set-up, making the Candela C-8 slower to pitch into a turn. This is because the duoprop C-pod electric drive that provides all the Candela C-8’s propulsion is fixed and cannot steer – it’s the front foils that turn the boat.

The Candela C-8 uses pushrods to flex the front carbonfibre foil, using some very sophisticated software controlling the whole shebang to keep the C-8 balanced and ‘airborne’ during the turn. It’s no mean feat.

There was still a fair bit of ice floating around Stockholm harbour – it was frozen solid a week before our test.

It was a useful impediment because it meant we had to regularly and, at times, forcefully change direction. While the response to steering inputs wasn’t instant, the Candeal C-8 was arguably more gratifying to blast around in than behind the helm of a traditional set-up. Then again, this high-tech ‘flying’ boat ain’t cheap.

But the Candela C-8 is an absolute delight to punt, and definitely unlike any other watercraft we’ve piloted before.

Another interesting facet of this innovative vehicle is its remote diagnostics – and troubleshooting. Our guide from Candela, Mikael, called back to base to get them to tweak some settings on the boat to optimise its performance. They uploaded the new software remotely – something that is likely to appeal to all the tech heads and gadget geeks out there.

After an hour or so blasting around Stockholm Harbour, we dial back the throttle. The transition from the foils to the hull is superbly smooth – also thanks to the onboard software systems.

Verdict

The Candela C-8 is a hugely impressive feat of hydrodynamic engineering. The fact it works so seamlessly and is so intuitive is quite astonishing – but then so is the price tag.

It remains to be seen how Aussies will respond to the innovative hydrofoil system when it arrives here, but we get a sense it could appeal to buyers who’ve never considered boating before, such is its elegant execution.

Candela’s state-of-the-art technology has to be experienced to be believed and while it’s true that $600,000 can buy a lot of boat, few will turn heads quite like this one.

Specifications
Model: Candela C-8 DC
Length overall: 8.5m
Beam: 2.5m
Deadrise: N/A
Draft: 0.5m (shallow)/0.9m (planing)/0.8m (foiling)/1.5m (at rest, foils down)
Weight: 1750kg
Motor: 45/50kW Candela C-Pod electric drive
Battery: Polestar 69.0kWh
Range: 57.0nm@22kt/3.0nm@4.0kt limp-home mode
Accommodations: 2
Passengers: 8

Priced from: €330,000 excluding VAT

Price as tested: €349,900 including hardtop; radar

Supplied by: Candela