Volvo Penta imagines boating of the future

The vision of the future, which relies heavily on Volvo Penta’s move to a battery-fuelled future and fully autonomous boats that steer themselves, effectively hints that in the future, no one is likely to own a boat and that recreational boating will likely become a service industry just like car rental or a short-term holiday home.

“To open the world of boating to a much wider audience, it must become easier,” Volvo Penta said in a statement released at this month’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

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“From selecting the boating experience to greater on-board assistance, there are substantial opportunities to change and simplify the ways things are done, built around an easier customer experience with wider appeal.”

Volvo Penta’s vision, outlined in a video, shows people using a smartphone app to book a boat that is docked at what looks like a standardised recharging port built into the boat’s transom.

The boat booking allows the user to pick which activity they’d like to take part in that day, ranging from fishing to watersports, cruising, or even heading out to an environmentally friendly, floating offshore island built on top of an artificial reef that offers hotel and restaurant services, as well as recharging facilities that use wind, wave and solar power generation.

The video shows the boat automatically picking its way out of the marina, and then setting a course based on GPS and marine mapping to navigate around potential natural and manmade hazards on the water.

Even the docking process – one of the biggest challenges to inexperienced boaters – appears automated.

“In the future, Volvo Penta believes that how and why people boat will change, with a more human-centric approach elevating the experience and new technology and business models making it more accessible,” Volvo Penta said. 

“Individually tailored experiences offer stronger emotional connections and greater scope for reaching new levels of enjoyment. 

“As part of this, the new customer experience must embrace less experienced boaters and new entrants. For both first-time boaters and highly skilled enthusiasts, there is a need to create a more personalised experience.”

If you’re a more experienced boater, Volvo Penta looks as though it will also cater to you. One of the more interesting features in the video includes the ability for motor yachts to find and then raft up with each other electronically – handy for groups heading out in separate motor yachts – and for a mothership to wirelessly recharge smaller boats virtually anchored alongside.

If one of the boats detects marine life, such as dolphins, manatees, seals or whales, the Volvo Penta boats can create a geofence that automatically directs other boats to steer around the area.

Volvo Penta also envisions its automated boating technology “nudging” inexperienced boaters to gain more experience by virtually mentoring them to help them learn to drive the boat independently.

Volvo Penta used the CES, the world’s largest showcase for new and emerging technologies, to get a taste of how the public is likely to react to a future of boating as a service.

“There is a unique and exciting future at sea that will be more sustainable, intuitive, easy, and seamless,” Volvo Penta global marine president Johan Inden said.

“What we are sharing is not a ready-made blueprint for the future. It is a conceptual look at how the future could evolve – intended to spark a dialogue. 

“Capturing feedback from CES is a key opportunity to define the future of boating, where we aim to apply this feedback directly into our research and development process.”