Yahoo Autos We Try Out Mercury Marine's EVs of the Seas
You can tell when the engineers are in charge.
Outboard-engine shoppers are accustomed to a big dumb horsepower number on the cowl of their engines, but Mercury's Avator electric outboards are rated in watts—the native unit of power preferred by the engineers who designed the motors.
This, we might guess, will lead to a bit of confusion down at the dock, as the Avator 7.5e makes one-tenth the power of the Avator 75e (750 watts versus 7500 watts), but that distinction is established by a subtlest of decimal points on the cowl graphic. And since the 7.5e uses a 1.0 kWh removable battery under the cowl and the 75e uses as many as four external 5.4 kWh batteries, the more powerful engine actually looks smaller, simply because packaging dictates that it doesn't need a big empty cowl when the motor is actually down underwater, in the nacelle ahead of the prop. We can just envision the marketing department pleading for form and function to part ways just enough to jibe with subliminal expectations—a bigger cowl means more horsepower, and in the name of Carl Kiekhaefer, horsepower's the unit of measurement.
Kiekhaefer, who founded Mercury in 1939, would probably be tickled by the Avators and the Fliteboards, which we sampled in Charleston, South Carolina. Both products represent new thinking in marine propulsion, but one of them realizes the promise of electric powertrains better than the other. We'll start with that one: the Fliteboard.
Board, Not Bored
Fliteboards are powered hydrofoil surfboards. At rest on the water, a Fliteboard looks like a stubby surfboard, with the 5' 8" Flight Air representing the entry-level model at $6995. Which, yes, is a lot of money for a board, but then again this is a board that requires no waves or tickets to Kelly Slater's Surf Ranch. Under the water, there's a 29-inch mast (high performance models have masts as long as 32 inches), two foils and an electric motor that either spins a propeller or a powers a jet drive. The battery, available in three sizes, is under the deck of the board. It's all a little bit awkward to get into the water—oddly shaped and weighing 59 pounds even with the smallest Nano battery and its 45 minutes of expected run time. But once you're aboard, it's ridiculous fun.
The Air uses a 5000-watt motor—so, 6.7 horsepower. That's a scary amount of power, when you think about it, like strapping a 200-cc Briggs & Stratton to a skateboard. Indeed, some of the pro riders on hand say that it's easy to exceed 30 mph on a Fliteboard, which is why we newbies are coached to keep our power setting to 5 (out of 20) on the wireless handheld controller. That's still enough to hit about 15 mph, which feels fast enough when you wipe out from two feet or so above the water.
The Fliteboard learning curve isn't inordinately steep. If you just wanted to ride it around at low speeds like a magic paddleboard, that's completely doable. Just keep your weight forward and you'll angle that underwater wing down, keeping the board in the water. But lean back just a bit and add throttle and the deck climbs out of the water, riding on the lift provided by the foil. Now there's a lot of fine tuning with the trigger-style throttle and fore-aft weight distribution to keep the foil supplying lift without climbing out of the water or diving back toward it. It doesn’t take much to alter the trim once you're foiling. As one instructor told me, "Sometimes just thinking about leaning forward is enough to correct a climb." My more oafish initial attempts at foiling resulted in tank-slappers, as I'd lean back too far and blow the prop out of the water, then overcorrect and slam the deck back down, usually ending my ride looking like I just got tossed over the side of a moving bass boat.
But within probably 30 minutes I was getting it. The epiphany came when I was up on the foil and a boat went past kicking a large wake. I pointed the bow of the board into the wake and braced for impact, but the Fliteboard glided smoothly through—the foil stayed submerged while the deck, up in the air, never touched the waves. If that sounds cool as hell, I assure you that it is.
Fliteboard's main challenge right now is the pricing. That $6995 base price gets you on the water, but you can build much more expensive, higher-performance boards—larger batteries, carbon fiber hulls, folding props that reduce drag when you surf down the faces of waves. The flagship Ultra L2 costs $15,780 with the Nano battery. Another $300 gets you double the battery life (up to 90 minutes) with the Sport battery. These kinds of prices are why Mark Zuckerberg is the poster child for powered foil boards, as well as mineral sunblock.
But if you have a sufficient pile of disposable income, a Fliteboard represents the promise and possibilities of on-water electrification: surfing, without the surf.
Meanwhile, Back at the Dock
Outboards are a tougher case to solve, for a bunch of reasons. The main issue is that, unlike cars, boats never go downhill and rarely slow from high speed to a stop, so there's no opportunity to recapture energy through regeneration. A boat engine is under load, always—former Mercury engine designer Erik Christiansen once told me that the assignment for a boat engine is basically that of "a fully loaded 18-wheeler that's perpetually climbing the Continental Divide." That means that an electric boat motor is going to require big batteries, but there's a practical upper limit on battery capacity that's even more challenging than the weight and cost issues: charging. Forget DC fast-charging—have you ever seen a Level 2 charger at a dock? Charging a boat means using removable batteries or making the best of the 120-volt shore power found on docks. Neither is an ideal way to charge the automotive-scale packs that might deliver useful range or allow for higher horsepower.
Given all that, the Avators work well in the narrow niches they'll occupy. We tried the 110e (the most powerful Avator so far, and roughly analogous to a 15-hp gas outboard) on a pontoon boat, and it shoved that floating living room down the channel at about 8 mph. A skinny Veer V13 fishing boat with the 7.5e hit 10 mph. Quickly jamming the throttle delivers a satisfying, albeit brief, surge of acceleration, but running wide open kills range, and even the optional 1-kW charger needs about 10 hours to charge the dual-battery pack.
Pricing depends on the boat and battery options, but a 110e with dual 5.4-kWh batteries would cost about as much as a 200-hp V-6 gas outboard. So, proof of concept established, but for now this is a solution to very specific use cases—lakes that ban gas engines, or tenders for larger boats.
Electric cars can already outperform-internal combustion ones in a lot of ways, but there's nothing in the Avator lineup that's as powerful or convenient as the two-stroke 25-hp Mercury that I throttled up on my dad's wooden lobster skiff 40 years ago. Lithium batteries were the breakthrough for electric cars, but electric outboards are still waiting for the technological leap that'll bring them to the mainstream.
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