Fast Electric Boats

[FrenchPhil]

This a little off topic but has anybody attempted going electric ? The UK Electric record team has achieved 70mph & they're going after 100mph this year:
http://www.electricrecordteam.com/

The Seatle Outboard Club has attained similar speeds :
http://www.seattleoutboard.org/electric.html

With gas prices soaring, electric seems the way to go. Has anybody tested
or been involved in testing fast electric boats.

[1BadAction]

I think its interesting, batteries have come a very long way in the past 8 years or so. The electric motor is a near perfect powerplant. It has an incredible torque curve, no reciprocating parts (therefore no vibration), sick amounts of RPM, and can be pretty efficient, but the batteries are still the limitation. even high amp lithium polymer packs on a scale that the motors need to push anything other than a flyweight would be pretty heavy.

that said, electric isn't really the ONLY answer to high oil prices. You are buying energy in some form or another, and most everything on electrical equipment is derived from oil. to get away from the majority of oil produced goods, its going to take many alternative sources of energy. it would be nice to plug a car into your solar panel yard and charge it up for a cruise. I'll do that only if I can still make V8 noises when im driving around. lol.

[Riverman]

Right now our students are preparing the race car for the North American Solar Challenge. One of the improvements this year is a new battery pack - a series of 4 volt LIP batteries, each the size of a coffee cup - each can carry 55 amp hours!!!

[fasterbass]

That is too cool! I have built some electric pontoon boats for some friends on private lakes with restrictions but using trolling motors there is no speed involved.I wonder if we could incorprate solar chargers into the gelcoat or fiberglass.at least the neighbors wouldnt complain about the noise.

[FrenchPhil]

The low speed marine applications have been numerous, not so for high speeds.Using standard 12 x 70Amps 12v batteries gives close to 165 hp . I've read that in that configuration 0-70mph in 300 feet had been achieved. Battery weight is important but so is a V6 + 40 gallons of gas.
Using light cats or hydros will keep boat weight to a minimum. The penalty so far is that at those speeds, run time is only a few minutes.