Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “‘Flight Testing’ a Hydrofoil Speed Boat: The Future of Electric Water Travel”.
Foreign trailing out behind you: no diesel or gas trailing into the water and no noise. That’S the promise of the Candela C8 speedboat, a 100 electric hydrofoil boat. That’S designed to fly above the waves, meaning that, when you’re on the water, your ride is fast, smooth and Incredibly silent, since releasing its first hydrofoil speedboat. In 2019, Swedish company Candela has been refining its design with a team of 50 Engineers. The result is the C8, an all-electric 28-foot power boat that uses hydrofoils to float out of the water and cruise above the waves. According to Candela, this design reduces water friction by as much as 80 percent. That, combined with the lightweight 100 carbon fiber Hull means the C8 uses less power to push through the water and Candela says that is the secret to long range. High speed, electric travel at sea. The C8 uses a 69 kilowatt hour battery from pole staff, which gives it a range of about 57 nautical miles at cruising speed.
That’S 22 knots or roughly 25 miles an hour. It can get up to 27 knots at top speed when it’s foiling all that power is driven by a remarkably small motor, known as the Cod mounted on the rear foil, Like a Torpedo, its direct drive. So there are no gears and it sits entirely underwater, meaning. There’S no combustion engine puttering on the back of the boat, all that makes the C8 phenomenally quiet. When I first got in the C8 and the motor started, I didn’t notice. I only really believed it when we started moving away from the dock. So right now, I’m sitting above the motor – and I am speaking at like talking to a friend in the cinema kind of level, and you can hear me because this isn’t a diesel or gas engine kind of puttering away. This is a direct dry motor.
It’S so quiet! I wonder if you can hear me if I’m whispering over it wow it’s crazy. My captain for the day is Candela CEO and sailing veteran Tangi de lamotte. He sailed solo around the world and has years of experience with hydrofoiling. So right now we’re going out of the marina.
We are doing about four and a half five knots and we’re using uh 1.2 kilowatt hour after our nautical mile. And the crazy thing is that when we’ll be flying, we’ll use the same amount of energy. But we’ll be doing 22 knots, so that’s how efficient the foils are. Whales aren’t new to sailing, but the C8 brings this technology to an electric Leisure boat and the foils solve one of the big problems with conventional speed boats.
All the power you need to push the hull through the waves. According to Candela, a conventional planing hull boat uses 15 times as much fuel per mile as a family car. The hydrofoils work in the same way as the wings of an airplane water passes over each side of the foil at different speeds, generating lift that pushes the hull of the boat out of the water, reducing drag and reducing power use being in the C8 for takeoff. Also feels a lot like taking off in an airplane, so the idea is like the plane.
You go straight and full power, then we’ll take off ready, and now we are flying. Oh, my gosh. It really does feel like you’re kind of flying through the air. Like I can, I don’t feel I don’t feel the waves buffeting underneath us.
I can see a speedboat riding along next to us and then bouncing up and down in the water, but we’re just cruising along, and you can actually see now that we’re riding along next to this power. But you can see the weight coming off that boat and we’re still riding above that, so we’re not really getting buffeted. Even though there’s all these waves coming off that speedboat next to us, so that’s pretty remarkable to feel and we feel a little. I can feel a little bit of jostling, but even then you can feel this boat correcting and just kind of stabilizing us out.
It’S like having a gimbal for your boat. It’S really cool foreign getting out of the waves on the hydrofoils means we’re not slamming down on every wave and wake we hit, but it’s not just the foils keeping the ride smooth. The C8 also uses data from sensors, gyroscopes and accelerometers across the boat to measure its movement in the water.
That info is then fed into the boat’s flight controller, which makes constant adjustments to help the C8 stay stable kind of, like avionics, in a drone. According to de la mote, that makes the C8 incredibly intuitive to operate in my carrier as a professional sailor. We we use the foils as well, but we are not allowed to have a software to help us control the foil. So it’s very different and, of course, we’re using the wind, but on this one we’re using we’re using electricity and a battery and a super high-tech software that adjusts the foils more than 100 times a second and that’s why anybody can do it? The beauty of the technology is that you don’t see it it’s there, but it’s doing everything for you, but it it’s not in your face. After cruising around the San Francisco Bay for 10 minutes, it was time for me to take the wheel.
Alright, I’m told I’m about to be a pilot because I’m not going to drive this I’m going to fly it they’ve. Let me behind the steering wheel. I just have to lift the throttle and then off we go so you sure you want to do this all right, oh, oh, and there it is. I feel, as we just kind of like, took off and now we’re out of the waves cruising along Candela has started taking orders for the C8 starting at 390 000 U.S. For that price. The company says: you’ll get all the bells and whistles you’d expect on a premium speedboat room for eight passengers, including the captain optional extras, like a hard top and space to sleep, two adults and two children.
The company is also opening up what it calls test flights here in the San Francisco Bay. If this is the future of boating, then I got ta say I can definitely get on board the idea that I can’t smell the gas motor. I can just fly over the ways with the sound of the birds around me and, frankly, throw me a glass of champagne, I’m ready to go time to take off .