Electric Boat Motor

[Scheer]

Long shot, but I figured I'd try here quick...

 

A family friend kinda screwed himself over, owns a lake that he is having houses developed on and let some of them form a lake association so he didn't have to deal with the nuances of lake management. Well.... they decided to ban gas boat motors and he just bought a 20 some foot pontoon boat. Its a small lake that he just putted around on anyways, so I'm looking into options to convert it to electric. The little 40-50 pound thrust trolling motors barely move it, so I doubt trying one of the $3k 120 pound trollers will do much more. I've found 20+ hp electric outboards, but its looking like $20k all said and done, which I doubt he wants to spend.

 

Aiming for 5-10 mph max speed, and have the power to maneuver around and un-beach it. My thought is to pick up an old 20-40 hp outboard, pull the power head, and essentially slap a ~10 hp golf cart motor and electrics on it. Seems like it would be fairly straight forward and doable for $5k or so.

 

I've seen a lot of the two extremes, either RC plane brushless motors for Kayaks and Jon boats, or 150 hp EV motors for bass boats, struggling to find any info on people doing this in that 10 hp range.

[Hackentosher]

I actually did a fair bit of research on this for work. From my reading, it appears that electric boat propulsion installations are not that much more expensive than gas motors. The difference comes in the batteries. Batteries are inherently expensive and have pretty shit energy density compared to normal fuels, but it looks like it's your only option here. For your application, I think it would be best to get a turnkey unit from the likes of Torqeedo, probably something from this range, and then looking to golf carts for the batteries not the motors. https://www.torqeedo.com/us/en-us/products/outboards/cruise I would avoid this company for sourcing batteries if you can because their prices are just extortion, but their propulsion units appear to be best in class. Obviously, do your due diligence, but hopefully that's a good place to start.

[straight_stewie]

2 hours ago, Scheer said:

A family friend kinda screwed himself over, owns a lake that he is having houses developed on and let some of them form a lake association so he didn't have to deal with the nuances of lake management. Well.... they decided to ban gas boat motors and he just bought a 20 some foot pontoon boat.

Has he considered talking to a lawyer about the legality of just not following the rule? If he actually owns the lake, the lake association might not actually have any power over what he does.

[Hackentosher]

10 hours ago, straight_stewie said:

Has he considered talking to a lawyer about the legality of just not following the rule? If he actually owns the lake, the lake association might not actually have any power over what he does.

Lol this is a better answer

[straight_stewie]

49 minutes ago, Hackentosher said:

Lol this is a better answer

Right. Or alternatively, these are affordably available in abundance:

 

Wind power works out better than electric power for boats. Hence why some big ships still use a form of wind sailing and there are no useful off-the-shelf electric boats, of any size, that I know of.

[akio123008]

14 hours ago, Scheer said:

Well.... they decided to ban gas boat motors

Ok. Are steam engines allowed?

[Scheer]

12 hours ago, straight_stewie said:

Has he considered talking to a lawyer about the legality of just not following the rule? If he actually owns the lake, the lake association might not actually have any power over what he does.

He isn't looking to start a fight, and was eventually going to convert it to electric regardless of the rules as its less noise and maintenance anyways, it was just moved up in priority and we assumed there would be some easy to find turnkey solutions. The eventual plan is solar panels on the roof so you don't even worry about charging it, just replace the batteries every 5 years or so.

 

Most people on the lake have these, he just wanted something that will hold a lot more people: https://www.protatch.com/pontoon-boats 

4 minutes ago, akio123008 said:

Ok. Are steam engines allowed?

Doubtful, I don't know the exact terms, probably electric only.

[straight_stewie]

3 hours ago, akio123008 said:

Ok. Are steam engines allowed?

Coincidentally, I can't imagine that anyone on the lake would have a problem with:

 

[akio123008]

12 hours ago, straight_stewie said:

Coincidentally, I can't imagine that anyone on the lake would have a problem with:

 

That's genuinly amazing