Elco Marine Motors
Save thousands in maintenance fees and breakdowns, enjoy being on the water instead.
When you evaluate whether to install an electric motor on your boat there are several things to consider. But before that, we need to rewire the way we think about what we do on the water. It wasn't to long ago everyone was tethered to their electric drill via use of a power cord. It was the only way to drill a hole. Now, we just grab our battery powered drill and drill as we want and we still get the work done. If you evaluate that transition, its not as strait forward as you may think. Battery powered tools have come along way, we can still use the corded version but why do we choose to grab the battery powered tool instead? Convenience, Power, It gets the job done. All the above? We learned through experience we don't need the all day power of a corded drill. We only use the drill for a few minuets to maybe an hour or two off and on at a time. When the batteries are getting low we stop and recharge or grab another battery. We learned how to work around the limitations of battery power and we also learned what our true needs really are. Electric boat motors are the same.
Do we really run our boats at full throttle for eight hours at a time? Or is it at roughly 60% while it is running. Depending on water roughness we usually are not at full throttle. And we only run for short periods at the time. We also use our trolling motor if we have one for slow trolling. So as with the drill, the need in most cases is not as much as one might think. If you do need longer run time, just add another battery! An electric 9.9 with three hundred amp hrs will last for around 6.5 hours at 60% throttle. While everyones boating needs are different, that may be more then enough for the average small boat user. When you do come in to dock you can recharge again and go out when you are ready with a fuller battery.
Batteries are like fuel tanks. The bigger the fuel tank you the longer you can stay out. Batteries are no different. The more amp hrs of storage that are available the longer you can stay out. The harder your push your gas engine the more fuel it will burn. The more throttle you give the electric motor the more amps are used and the shorter the run time will be. So electric and gas engines are in many ways the same as far as time available on the water and how that time is used. You do have to manage your time better with electric motors, being you cant just pull up to a gas station and buy more amps, not efficiently. But how often do you really refuel with gas when under way. You plan around it, right!
So why go electric. The return on the investment is much greater with electric. The most expensive part of the electric option is the batteries in some cases. A 300 amp hr battery configuration can run upwards of $6000! The total outlay to get your boat configured to electric 9.9 is approximately $11,626.00 Wow, that sounds EXPENSIVE! Lets do some comparison shopping of the electric vs. gas. But lets also figure the full expense over a twelve year period. Lithium batteries are warrantied for 12 years , so we will just use that as a measuring value. The electric 9.9 motor and everything needed, throttle cables, tilt / trim, monitor, charger, 300 amp batteries is approximately $11626.00 for the 12 years. No other expenses assumed because of the reliability of the motors and batteries. Now lets see how the gas 9.9 does. Engine efi tilt / trim, throttle, battery, charger, and fuel at current $3.25 gal. over those same 12 years. Assuming 6 hours a day eight times a month for eight months. Wait, we have to add scheduled maintenance. Service, winterizing, tune ups over those 12 years. $24,680. I wont even add any unscheduled maintenance, coils, stators, starter, batteries etc. The gas engine and all its baggage is over twice more expensive to operate. With unscheduled maintenance over 12 years you can easily add many thousands of dollars to the total.
These are just some ball park figures as everyone will operate their boats differently. But the point is, with a little rewiring as to how we operate our boats, just as we did with the battery drill, we can save a lot of money. The big difference is the more you operate a gas boat the more it will cost you to operate. Conversely the more you operate the electric driven boat the cheaper it will cost per hour. You spend your money up front with the electric, so the more you use it the greater the return is, no scheduled or unscheduled expense over those 12 years. As a side note, I am only comparing the powerhead. The lower unit on the electric is the same as the gas and requires the same maintenance schedule. According to Elco. The efficiency of the Elco AC Motor is 85-92%, which is over 30% more efficient than a DC motor and over 40-50% more efficient than a combustion motor. The AC motor is rated for up to 50,000 hours service life. With only one moving part, there isn’t much that can go wrong and the motor requires virtually zero maintenance. An Elco EP Motor contains only one moving part and provides full torque throughout most of the torque curve. The EP motor provides full torque at 1RPM, all while operating in complete silence.
