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tahanson43206

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Registered: 2018-04-27

Posts: 17,316

Electric Boat - (not the company) - all-electric powered boats

There is a company by the name "Electric Boat".

Well, there ** used ** to be.... it was purchased and is now:

Latest Company News
October 16, 2023
General Dynamics Electric Boat

This topic is offered for our members to report and comment upon all-electric boats.

The category will eventually extend to all-electric ships.

A nuclear reactor powered vessel that delivers electricity to motors to provide propulsion seems to me to be a reasonable fit for this topic.

I'll open with a venture firm started by an entrepreneur from India who landed an internship at Fermi Lab, and parlayed that into advanced education and eventually entrepreneurship.

(th)

tahanson43206

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Registered: 2018-04-27

Posts: 17,316

Re: Electric Boat - (not the company) - all-electric powered boats

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/meet-36 … 00082.html

Robb Report
Meet the 36-Year-Old Scientist Who Designed a Foiling Boat That Could Reshape the Industry
Rachel Cormack
Updated Sat, October 28, 2023 at 12:27 PM EDT·6 min read
290

Sampriti Bhattacharyya broke free of the traditional gender constraints in her native India to become the founder and CEO of a pioneering electric-boatbuilder in the U.S. But ironically, when we connect via Zoom, she’s back in the confines of her teenage bedroom in Kolkata for the first time in seven years. She points out the relics of her past that led her to train as an aerospace engineer in the States: a copy of Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time (which further expanded her interest in the universe), the hulking Compaq computer on which she first googled “American internship,” and… a poster of a ’90s boy band. “The only thing I knew about America was NASA and the Backstreet Boys,” she says with a laugh.

The 36-year-old Bhattacharyya has been defying the odds from the beginning. She attended a small local college in Kolkata, not one of India’s prestige academic pipelines, and says people never thought of her as particularly smart. “The best that was expected out of me,” she recalls, “was maybe to be a housewife or work a low-key job.” But Bhattacharyya was always fascinated by space and curious about ocean exploration, taking astrophysics and cosmology classes as a “hobby.” She also dove into robotics projects.

Such single-mindedness can be a bit isolating, she admits, but it also “has its pluses”: It drove her to apply for no fewer than 540 internships on that Compaq. “Maybe if I sent 200 emails, then I would not have made it to the U.S.,” she muses. After receiving a total of four responses, she eventually scored a coveted summer internship at Fermilab, America’s particle physics and accelerator laboratory. At age 20, Bhattacharyya boarded a plane for the first time and arrived in Chicago with $200 in her pocket.

She soon fell in love with machines and coding—specifically, how technology could help solve what she calls the world’s hard problems. That notion would become her modus operandi and the crux of her subsequent start-ups. Following her Fermi gig and while earning a master of science at the Ohio State University, Bhattacharyya landed an internship working on autonomous aircraft at NASA’s Ames Research Center. NASA is where she also first learned about the youthful entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley. “I saw Mark Zuckerberg, and I was blown away by the fact that somebody young could be a CEO,” she says. “That planted the idea in my head about starting a company.”

The Hydroswarm team at MIT in 2016. Bhattacharyya (second from left) holds a model of the company’s submersible robot.
The Hydroswarm team at MIT in 2016. Bhattacharyya (second from left) holds a model of the company’s submersible robot.
First, she armed herself with more education, entering the PhD program in mechanical engineering at MIT. In 2015, at the age of 28 and two years before earning her doctorate as a roboticist, she launched Hydroswarm. The company, which produced underwater drones to map the ocean floor, ultimately folded, but Bhattacharyya’s goal of creating a fleet of autonomous vessels remained. Her ability to persevere despite, by her own count, “many failures,” is partly inspired by Amazon’s billionaire founder. “Jeff Bezos says, ‘Be stubborn on vision, but flexible on details,’ ” she says. “I did that when Hydroswarm didn’t pan out.”

Bhattacharyya pivoted, building an operating system to modernize existing boats and, she hoped, transform water-borne transport with self-piloting fleets. The pandemic threw a wrench into that plan, as it proved impossible to get access to vessels, let alone refit them. The entrepreneur in her, though, was convinced that the electric revolution could expand from land to sea. Computing was getting cheaper, sensors were becoming more advanced, and scalable manufacturing was now a real possibility. Instead of thinking smaller, she went bigger: “It became clear the answer was not retrofitting,” she says. “It was imagining the next-generation vessels from the ground up.”

In 2020, Bhattacharyya tapped fellow MIT-trained engineer Reo Baird to help launch Navier, in the hope of creating a cleaner, more efficient way to travel on the waves and, in the process, alleviating congestion on the roads. The duo established a core team of seven industry experts by selling them the dream. Bhattacharyya recruited hydrofoil specialist Paul Bieker as the lead naval architect. “I called him up and said, ‘I know you built $40 million yachts for America’s Cup, but if we scale this technology, it will change the way people move on the waterways,’ ” she says. When engineer Kenneth Jensen, who previously worked at Google and Uber, initially rebuffed her overtures, Bhattacharyya told him, “This thing has to exist.” He is now Navier’s chief technology officer. Her persistence also saw the start-up draw $10 million in seed funding from the likes of Google cofounder Sergey Brin, Android cofounder Rich Miner, and other venture capitalists.

Working out of its San Francisco headquarters, Navier designed a 30-foot, eight-passenger electric foiling yacht (the N30) that progressed from sketch to full-scale, finished boat in 11 months. Three months later, a second vessel was complete. “What amazed me was that they worked in the first sea trial,” Bhattacharyya says.

“The best that was expected out of me,” she recalls, “was maybe to be a housewife or work a low-key job.”

The N30 glides four feet above the water on three carbon foils that boost speed and efficiency while minimizing wake and drag. The foil concept has been around since the early 19th century, but Navier’s proprietary operating system sets the N30 apart. The vessel’s sensors feed information about wave conditions to software that then adjusts the foils to ensure a smooth ride. (We tested it, and it was downright peaceful.) The tech array even includes autodocking, or “one-click docking.” The boat is also equipped with two 90 kW electric motors that allow it to hit 35 knots at full tilt and cover 75 nautical miles at 22 knots. Thanks to the foils and the diminished drag, the zero-emissions cruiser, Navier claims, is 10 times more efficient than traditional gas-powered boats. “It is the most advanced electric marine vessel for sure,” Bhattacharyya says.

The N30 will be available in three configurations: Open ($375,000), Hardtop ($450,000), and Cabin ($550,000). The company expects to deliver between 30 and 50 crafts by the end of next year, with the electromechanical R&D and assembly done in Alameda, Calif. These personal vessels will be a great way to “fine-tune” the technology, Bhattacharyya says, but are only a small part of Navier’s master plan. She hopes to eventually roll out electric water taxis and barges to transport people and goods in coastal cities around the world.

“I think when we make that happen,” she says, a note of steely determination underlying her sunny optimism, “that would really be the testament to my success.”

Best of Robb Report

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GW Johnson

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From: McGregor, Texas USA

Registered: 2011-12-04

Posts: 5,467

Website

Re: Electric Boat - (not the company) - all-electric powered boats

Electric Boat in Connecticut built a lot of diesel-electric submarines for the US Navy,  from between the world wars until the 1960's,  when nuclear pretty much superseded the diesel-electric.   I'm not sure about the early designs,  but the WW2 fleet subs and their immediate predecessors at the time of the V-boats in the 1930's were all-electric drive,  with the diesels running only electric generators to keep the lead-acid batteries charged. 

These fleet types were 4-engine boats capable of running up to about 22 knots on the surface,  and with 10,000-12,000 nautical mile range if you slowed a bit.  The Gato's were test depth rated to 300 feet,  while the Balao's and Tench's were rated to a test depth of 400 feet. I've actually been aboard a Balao still on active service with USN as a Guppy-modified boat when I was young.  Several of them survived in combat to depths of 600-700 feet.

A lot of the nuclear submarines are direct mechanical drive with steam turbines.  Some are electric drive with the steam turbines instead just generating electricity.

Some of the WW1 designs had clutches so the diesels could drive both the generators and the propeller shafts while surfaced.  That didn't work out so well as all-electric drive,  in terms of reliability.  This clutch thing was in the S-class boats from about 1919-to-1925-ish. Some of these served in combat during WW2.  They were were 2-engine boats,  capable of about 14 knots surfaced,  and about 5000 or 6000 nmi range,  if memory serves (which it might not at my age).  Test depth was 200 feet.  One of them survived grounding at 315 feet off China,  running from Japanese destroyers in WW2.

The diesel-electric thing done as all-electric drive is a true hybrid propulsion system.  In the 1930's it was small enough to fit in a 300-foot-long fleet submarine,  and in a railway diesel locomotive.  It's small enough now to it in a car.  The plug-in hybrids approximate it,  but not correctly.  You still have a very complicated and expensive transmission accepting shaft power from both an engine and an electric motor,  even with the plug-in hybrids. 

Hybrid cars really should be done with all-electric drive,  and you do not need a complicated transmission.  The plug-in hybrids proved that the electric components have to the power and the ruggedness to serve that function.  You could put the motor-generator and the fuel tank in a small trailer,  that you pull only when you need the range.  That trailer could also carry luggage or cargo for you. Again,  only when you need it.

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2023-10-30 20:18:57)

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GW Johnson
McGregor,  Texas

"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew,  especially one dead from a bad management decision"

tahanson43206

Moderator

Registered: 2018-04-27

Posts: 17,316

Re: Electric Boat - (not the company) - all-electric powered boats

The article at the link below is about an efficient design that allows electric motors to deliver superior speed and range...

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/world-1 … 59102.html

The vessel rides on hydrofoils.

This is a Swedish initiative.

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SpaceNut

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From: New Hampshire

Registered: 2004-07-22

Posts: 28,960

Re: Electric Boat - (not the company) - all-electric powered boats

'Flying over water': Why this electric car-boat vehicle will move like a plane

interesting amphibian.