[Candelaboat]

That's a great question. Purpose. Even though some might consider boating a senseless activity, people around the world enjoy it dearly. Boating is simply one of the world's biggest outdoor activities.

We could have gone for trying to make people quit buying, using and spending on boats, but that seemed a lot harder than creating a better alternative to regular boats.

5 years of R&D, sweat, tears and big load of broken foils later, we are in full production with a boat that reduces local emissions by 99%, compared to fossil boats.

[fock]

so in what wonderland are you charging your boat with this 99%-less CO2-grid?

And guess what, boating could arguably also be done with a 100% reduced emission footprint. It's called sailing.

Btw: what did I miss that owning and operating a boat is one of the biggest outdoor activities (especially small motorboats?)?

As far as the tech goes: it looks interesting, but safe the "we are making the world a better place" part.

[Candelaboat]

Gasoline when burned emits 2.3kgs of CO2 One can confidently assume 1.5 liters per nautical mile for an 8 meter petrol boat at speeds above 20 knots. That's 3450 grams per NM.

Our boats consume roughly 1 kwh per NM, from the grid. Swedish electricity generation emits about 15g of CO2 per kWh. That's even better than 99%.

Even in the US, in 2013, with 500g of CO2 per kWh, the emissions from a Candela are still 85% lower. And at least 99% lower locally in the water where the boat is being used.

It would be fantastic if all boating was done by sails, but saying that's the solution is like saying Tesla shouldn't have innovated on the automobile because there is already a technology for moving around on roads: bikes.

Do you suggest that nothing should be done about emissions on the water?

[fock]

> at speeds above 20knots

maybe speed is a problem here. and if you are slow, it's a lot less.

Also burning at least 50€ (I'm not sure about tax exemptions for nautical fuel, but in Europe 1.5€/l is very likely) for a short trip of ~30km back and forth (which you could hike in a day - though not on water) underlines that whatever you consider "boating, the mass hobby" is something done (to great environmental cost) by a very, very small minority.

And yes I'm all for taxing the people with enough money to burn today so that they won't have to do that tomorrow - and reducing emissions of global sea trade as well.

[vlangber]

There are 1 million leisure boats in Norway, with 5,4m inhabitants. So not exactly just for a very, very small minority..

[fock]

motorized leisure boats over 8m going 20knots. I doubt that.