Would the pontoon community be interested in this?

[brynelle]

Hello. I am a UW student working on a marketing class assignment. My task is to provide a market opportunity analysis for a product that is not yet in production. It is in the prototype phase. I need help discovering the target market. ***please note---this is not advertising. I am in no way affiliated with this product. This is for an assignment. I have to write a 12 page paper and present my analysis in class.

A few other forums have suggested that perhaps the pontoon community would be interested in this product, so that is why I am posting here.

It is an electric outboard motor. Here is the website: http://www.purewatercraft.com/portfolio ... ard/#specs

Here are the specs:
Pure Outboard Motor:

Versions: 9.9HP, 15HP, 20HP, or 25HP *Please note that since it is electric it behaves differently than gas. the 9.9hp is equivalent to a 13-17 hp gas outboard, and the 25 hp electric is equivalent to a 35 hp gas outboard.
Weight: about 80 lbs
Voltage: 350V
Prop RPM at peak power: 1500RPM
Propeller: 16″ diameter 3-blade propeller
Motor: 20 kW continuous power PMAC motor, passively cooled underwater in line with propeller
Motor controller: closed loop liquid cooled
Gear set: two-stage, 8:1 reduction

Pure Outboard Battery Pack

Voltage (nominal): 350V
Capacity: 6kWh (multiple packs can be combined for larger capacity)
Cells: 18650 form factor, 95s6p
Weight: about 90 lbs
Thermal management: phase-change material
Cycle life: approximately 1500

Thank you for your time.

[HandymanHerb]

Be alright if you were on a small pond, even the 25 is going to be slow

[brynelle]

Be alright if you were on a small pond, even the 25 is going to be slow

Sorry - I should have added this to the post (which I made the correction just now).

Please note that since it is electric it behaves differently than gas. the 9.9hp is equivalent to a 13-17 hp gas outboard, and the 25 hp electric is equivalent to a 35 hp gas outboard.

Would 35 hp be too slow?

[Bamby]

I could see where there could be at least a limited but viable market for an electric outboard motor but the information you've posted here and on the website is to vague to determine viability to say the least. Site states Propriety batteries are utilized for the outboard which kind of sucks in a lot of ways as far as potential strand-ability concerns. Another is the voltage capability with a boats preexisting 12 volt electrical needs, is a 12 volt port available? Is the motor and or lower end designed to be totally free of oils or lubricants of any kind? If free of lubricants I could see it's utilization in total electric lakes, they actually do exist but maybe even more so on municipal lakes built for water supply. Many of them offer excellent fishing opportunity but are also electric only to preserve water quality.

Where on site is a photo of a unit or even the prototype unit utilized to obtain the baseline quoted in your post or site? I find it hard to believe anyone would pre-purchase such a product sight unseen and at a unknown price-point.

[RcgTexas]

Price?? That would be a factor. A good 80 lb thrust troll motor can be had for less than $1500. That's with remote control and non proprietary batteries.

Bow thruster or electric lake may be a use tell us more and

[teecro]

Price, range and weight..... Take a look at what a 6kWh battery pack will set you back; it is not going to be cheap. How is that HP measured at the motor, prop or via a formula due to the use of a gear box? I've got a 35 HP 480 VAC 3P motor sitting near by and it weights in at several hundred pounds not a svelte 80 pounds.

[Cowracer]

20HP which would be dead slow on just about any pontoon boat works to damn near 15KW . With a 6KWH battery pack, you would get 24 minutes of operation at full speed with a 6kwh battery. That is, of course, assuming that your battery pack can actually produce the 42 amps required, and it can't.

KWH means very little for determining battery capacity. A certain battery might give you 5 amps for 10 hours (50 amp-hours) . You might look at the numbers and think, well if it gives me 5 amp for 10 hours, I can get 50 amps for an hour. At best, you might get those 50 amps for 6-7 minutes before the battery is depleted. A better metric to look at is reserve capacity, which is the length of time a battery can give a useful load (standardized to 25 amps) a 60 minute reserve means you can count on 25 amps of current for an hour. Again, that does not mean you can count on 50 amps for 30 minutes.

Your specs on the battery don't give much data, but I think are using Lithium-Ion in the standard 18650 cells in a 96 series/6 parallel format. The best of those give you about 3 amp-hours at 3.7 volts (11.1 watts-hours) . your 96 in series would indeed give 350 volts, and the 6 of those 96 cell strings in parallel would provide about 18 amp-hours at 350 volts giving you your 6kwh.

But! even if those batteries were capable of giving you all 18 amp-hours in one hour (they cant because of reasons above) that is still only 18 amps or about 9 hp for an hours use. At a average wholesale cost of $3.50 a cell, you are looking at $2,100 just for the batteries, not including the housing, insulators, wires, or time to assemble.

I think someone has a pipe-dream here because they do not understand batteries well enough.

Tim

p.s. I would like to see what motor they are using that runs at 12000 rpm (1500 rpm prop speed with a 8:1 gear reduction) at 25hp.

[brynelle]

I think someone has a pipe-dream here because they do not understand batteries well enough.

Tim

p.s. I would like to see what motor they are using that runs at 12000 rpm (1500 rpm prop speed with a 8:1 gear reduction) at 25hp.

I don't have a picture, but there are youtube videos of it being used.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTzNUEBCWNM

I don't know all the technicalities of batteries. The website says that it can run a 25' low wake hull for 5+ hours at 6mph. I don't know if that means anything to you.

[brynelle]

Price, range and weight..... Take a look at what a 6kWh battery pack will set you back; it is not going to be cheap. How is that HP measured at the motor, prop or via a formula due to the use of a gear box? I've got a 35 HP 480 VAC 3P motor sitting near by and it weights in at several hundred pounds not a svelte 80 pounds.

Price is not set yet. I know Torqeedo and other brands have comparable products that are outrageously priced. I know that it would have to beat those and be more competitive with gas motors in order to succeed. I don't know if it will be able to do that.

I don't know how the hp is measured. All I have is what the company has on it's website. I might be able to find out if it is crucially important.

[Cowracer]

I think someone has a pipe-dream here because they do not understand batteries well enough.

Tim

p.s. I would like to see what motor they are using that runs at 12000 rpm (1500 rpm prop speed with a 8:1 gear reduction) at 25hp.

I don't have a picture, but there are youtube videos of it being used.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTzNUEBCWNM

I don't know all the technicalities of batteries. The website says that it can run a 25' low wake hull for 5+ hours at 6mph. I don't know if that means anything to you.

Assuming a few things (Like a boat weight of 2000 lbs) and doing a little math that I won't tire you with here... That hull would take about 3 hp to run 6 mph. That is about 2.3 kw total. or maybe 3 hours run time on a 6kwh battery pack not factoring in things like wind, current, tide, etc. The 20+ year electrical engineer in me cannot believe that run time claim.

Power requirements increase at the square of the speed, so this you cannot think that if you can run 5 hours at 6 mph, you can run 1 hour at 30. It just don't work that way.

Again, I stand by my calculations that if you have a 20HP motor and are running it flat out, your 6kwh battery would only be good for about 25 minutes, and that sucking out ever last coulomb of energy. Practically, your voltage would decay at about 40% charge, which would reduce run-time even further.

Tim

[Bamby]

Well what's your opinion on this electric outboard Tim, feasible or no? Can't seem to find a copy we're they really running or actually utilizing it.

[Mosnowman]

The problem is power....

Most new pontoons/tritoons have a minimum of 90hp..115-150hp is average. Newer bigger too s are putting 200-300 hp on the boats. The older days of pontoons would be more appropriate but I believe the horsepower would kill the product.

[illinoid]

Looks like it would only be feasible for a very small portion of the market. You have to convince a large enough slice of the market to sell enough units to cover all the expenses and obviously perform well enough to sustain in the market. I think you need to demonstrate that it is superior to the electrics and low HP gas motors on the market. I think sailboat might be a better application as it has a very low resistance hull and if the batteries could be designed to fit in the keel that would be a real advantage.

[Bamby]

Looks like it would only be feasible for a very small portion of the market. You have to convince a large enough slice of the market to sell enough units to cover all the expenses and obviously perform well enough to sustain in the market. I think you need to demonstrate that it is superior to the electrics and low HP gas motors on the market. I think sailboat might be a better application as it has a very low resistance hull and if the batteries could be designed to fit in the keel that would be a real advantage.

I wouldn't be so quick to discourage innovation. I'm assuming it's a start up company without layers of pencil pushing upper management and stock holders to support. And as such a small share of the market may be profitable enough to sustain the company and put a bit aside for future growth. We need innovation in this country and almost every community needs jobs even if they are with a small upstart manufacture.

If they could sell or market just 10 units for each state that would generate 500 units per year meaning a production rate of two complete units per day. I suspect they could do somewhat better myself, but if they can manage to cover all their expenses IMHO it's a profitable enterprise despite the sales volume.

[brynelle]

I wish I could "like" posts. Thank you all for your feedback!