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Jet Boat Feasibility

1010 Views 1 Reply 2 Participants Last post by  Duncan, 
J
Hi everyone,

I have a 2003 Custom Weld Cobra Jet Boat which has been perfect for me and my family in most ways. However, my family has fallen in love with electric cars and now have many among us, so the concept has been floated to explore an electric conversion. I am mostly wondering if the math works on doing an electric conversion, and what types of motors and batteries would be a good fit for our set up.

Our boat has a Chevy 350/325hp, an American Turbine 312 Jet Drive and a 50ish gallon fuel tank. We average about 8 gallons/hr of fuel on a plane around 3300rpm traveling ~30mph. There is no transmission as the engine spins the jet drive even at idle and reverse is achieved with a bucket that drops down over the jet. I figure with the simplicity of our set up and ~950lbs of weight to work with (600lbs fully dressed engine/350lbs fuel and tank), that it could be a prime candidate for a swap.

Most of what we do boating is a 10 mile round trip in the San Juan islands, though we occasionally do a 30 mile round trip. We have access to 220 chargers at home for our electric vehicles and I believe the roof of our boat would be a good place to mount solar panels for some token charging throughout the day.

I am hoping that someone can help by telling me if I am crazy, or if this seems like a good idea and give me a realistic idea of how much range we could attain without adding too much weight.

Thanks in advance,

Drew


http://customweld.com/20-cobra/
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Duncan

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Hi
Eight gallons of fuel is about 23 kg
45 megajoules per kg
So 1035 MegaJoules is 287 kiloWatthours

Assume that the electric motor is 2.87 times as efficient as the V8 (makes the numbers easier)

That is 100 kWh - for one hour's use

A Tesla 100 kWh battery is about 630 kg - 1386 lbs

You have probably got less than half of that weight to use for batteries - so you would end up with 30 minutes or less of power

Sorry but it's probably not feasible
 
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