Candela’s C-8 Polestar will go down in the history books.
The 28-footer has set a new record for the longest distance traveled by an electric boat in one day, according to the Swedish outfit. The foiling yacht covered 420 nautical miles in 24 hours—the equivalent of traveling from New York City to Washington, D.C., and back—comfortably surpassing the previous record of 79 nautical miles that the Voltari 260 covered in 20 hours.
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“This feat shows that fast, electric waterborne transport over long distances is viable today, not a distant future,” Candela CEO and founder Gustav Hasselskog, who piloted the boat during the record run, said in a statement.
The C-8 is equipped with a 69 kWh Polestar battery and a 75 kW electric motor that give the boat a top speed of 30 knots and a range of 57 nautical miles at 22 knots. The lightweight carbon-fiber vessel is also fitted with foils that allow it to “fly” above waves with less drag and more efficiency than conventional vessels.
The C-8 cruised around a 20-nautical-mile loop in the waters of Stockholm, stopping after each lap to juice up via a Plug charger that was mated to Northvolt’s Voltpack mobile battery system. Candela says this setup was designed to illustrate how simple yet effective a DC charging network could be.
“With a relatively modest investment, charging stations could be built to fully electrify marine transport in the Stockholm archipelago,” Hasselskog adds. “For a few hundred million euros, a charging network covering Europe’s coastal passenger transports would become a reality.”
During the challenge, the C-8 was charged for a total of 313 minutes and received a total of 615 kWh of electrical energy. Each charge took only 18 minutes. More impressive still, the average speed during the 24-hour run was 17 knots (including charging), though the C-8 was running close to full speed (27 knots) most of the time. By comparison, Voltari’s boat crawled at about 3.95 knots during its record attempt.
The feat highlighted the type of savings seafarers can expect with the C-8, too. Candela says the total cost for electricity was approximately $117 (€110), while a traditional boat would require at least $1,490 (€1,400) worth of fuel to complete the same long-distance journey.
Candela isn’t just building zero-emission dayboats, either. The yard has a 30-person shuttle and a 28-foot water taxi in the pipeline. Let’s see if the rest of the fleet sets any records.
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