Navier's 30ft electric hydrofoil boat takes on water and prepares for production

Electric leisure boat startup Navier has successfully brought its hydrofoil watercraft concept to life and has opened up pre-orders - if you have a few hundred thousand dollars. It might not be affordable, but it's not like the other 30ft boats you can order that are a bargain either. At least this one doesn't burn 10 gallons of gas per hour.

Navier just harvested a seed at the start of the year, by which time the boat was a 27-foot twinkle in the eyes of its founders, Sampriti Bhattacharyya (whom I met on "the accelerator at sea ") and Reo Baird. Now it's a real 30ft boat that plows through the waves at 25 knots.

The craft is fully electric and uses the hydrofoil to circumvent the fact that batteries, while suitable for wheeled vehicles, quickly drain as you push back the water as you progress. The hydrofoil essentially takes advantage of the physics of water resistance to forward motion to lift the bulkier part of the boat above the surface, while the propulsion part remains below, tethered by fine fins.

The basic approach is not unique: Candela also makes a few electric hydrofoils and is trying to tap into some of the same markets. But Navier touts a longer range — around 75 nautical miles versus the Candelas' 50 — and a more user-friendly experience. That is, a more comfortable cockpit, greater focus on the user experience and a sport mode that allows the pilot to control the boat more directly.

Its foils are also completely retractable, allowing the N30 to cruise in shallow water without scraping the bottom. Keeping them hidden also minimizes "biofouling", i.e. algae and barnacles.

Bhattacharyya was quick to add, however, that she considers Candela more of a colleague than a competitor: the real competition is the gas-powered boats. “I think to free our lakes and oceans from fossil pollutants and rebuild the maritime industry, we all need to do more and faster. We need to replace our gas rivals – there are many of them, and more people in the industry can quickly go electric, the better we can speed up saving the planet,” she wrote in an email.

Aerial view of the Navier boat in its infancy. Image credits: Navier

Of course, at $300,000 apiece, they won't be replacing dinghies with five-horsepower outboards. This caters more to luxury clientele and institutional clients like water taxi services. Fuel is expensive, cutting into already thin margins in shipping operations. A 10-passenger boat that doesn't burn fuel could be ideal for shuttling commuters across a bay or lake, or for three-hour excursions. The amount of marine fuel expended on this type of voyage is enormous, and gasoline-powered boats do not run particularly cleanly.

The just-unveiled N30 has been described by Bhattacharyya as "software driven", which at first glance seems like an odd claim to make for a boat. But while most boats float, hydrofoiling is a process that must be actively monitored to maintain stability.

"It's a combination of a boat and a plane - there are a lot of very complex parts, but that's what it takes to build something that's more stage-efficient" , she explained, comparing the boat to a fighter jet, which compensates for natural instability with constant software-defined adjustments. "The software in the control system is what stabilizes it and drives it using information from the sensors and then driving the actuators. The user operates at a higher level (or external lo...