2018 State of the Tech: The Electric Outboard Motor

One of the best parts about getting out on the water early in the morning or late in the evening is the quiet. Nearby human neighbors are likely either asleep or otherwise occupied, and you’ve got nothing but the local fauna to fill the surrounding soundscape.

But if you’re relying on a gas-powered motor to get around, then you won’t be able to pick up on much besides the slap of a beaver’s tail, if that. 

Among gas-powered outboard motors, there’s no real way of getting around this. Your smaller four-stroke 10-horsepower will be high-pitched and whiny. Larger motors might sound less irritating from far off, but they still crank out more noise in total. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Electric outboard motors today are prized for their near-silence, efficiency, low maintenance costs, and durability. It used to be that gas-powered outboards seriously outperformed them in terms of horse power, but that has begun to change lately as battery technology has continued to improve.

Then there's the delicate subject of environmental impact. Let's just say outboards are by far worse offenders in terms of oil and fuel spillage and emissions, not to mention inefficiency. Gas trolling motors are not green.

Before we go further, this article will focus on electric outboard motors intended as primary transportation. Electric trolling motors are great too, but even the best trolling motor won’t move you from point A to B in any kind of realistic fashion. The motors discussed in this article are a minimum of 3 HP in size.

High-Voltage History

While they’re changing the way people fish, the electric outboard motor has actually been around since the ‘70s. Morton Ray got the idea after seeing gas motorboats converted into electric.

“The idea was OK, but they were noisy and not very dependable,” Ray writes on his company’s site.

With the help of his wife, Dot, Ray made the prototype in his basement and successfully brought it to market in 1974 with his new company, Ray Electric Outboards. It seems too crazy to be true, but he claims that 99% of the motors his company has produced are still in service.

Since, many other manufacturers have joined the market, including Torqeedo, KARVIN, Pure Watercraft, Elco, ePropulsion, and AquaWatt.

State of the Tech

When it comes to an electric outboard motor, the biggest determining factor of quality will be the battery. The battery will determine how fast you can go, how long you can drive, the load you can push, the weight of the device, and many other factors.

These motors’ batteries will be mentioned variously along with the products themselves as we go over different qualities to look for in a motor and which devices exceed in each.

Voltage/Horse Power/Top Speed

When checking out electric outboards, some will measure different versions by thrust or a top speed in knots. Others (along with most gas powered motors) measure horse power (HP). Others still use the voltage of the battery or the propulsion power. Each of these boils down to how powerful the motor is, and how fast you can go.

In many fishing circumstances, you won’t be spending hours motoring to your destination and/or won’t be hauling a heavy load. You won’t, therefore, need a big, powerful motor.

But let’s say you did. The biggest electric outboard currently available on the market (so it seems) would be the Torqeedo Deep Blue, which can go all the way up to 80 HP. It sports a 355 V battery. A few years ago, a company called ReGen Nautic appeared to have developed a 300 HP motor, but it doesn’t seem that they found a reliable customer base willing to pay $25k for an outboard motor.

More realistic for the average boating angler, at least from Torqueedo, is something in the 5-HP Cruise line.

Battery Life

If you’re out for a long trip with a gas outboard motor, you can just bring more gas. But with an electric outboard motor, you need to bring more batteries, charge out on the water, or make do with a single charge.

Battery life will vary based on how fast you’re going and what you’re hauling, but electric outboard motors tend to last about 40 minutes under full throttle. Cut down to about half throttle, however, it’s not unrealistic to expect over 5 hours of life.

The ePropulsion Spirit 1.0 stands out in this field. It has a 3 HP battery with an output of 1 kWh, and it can handle full speed for roughly one hour.

Weight

Electric batteries are great, totally efficient, and produce zero emissions. But they’re heavy. One of the drawbacks with some of the bigger engines is that they’re no picnic to install. Sure, you might not take your motor on or off except to store it in the winter, but it’s still a factor.

Measuring weight is fairly difficult, because every manufacturer produces a different range of engine sizes. If saving on weight is your #1 priority, then you should check out trolling motors. At just over 30 lb and a 3 HP motor, the Torqeedo Travel 1003 certainly has one of the better weight-to-power ratios.