Los Angeles startup Arc is on a mission to do for boats what Tesla did for cars.
Recently, they invited me on board their flagship Arc One all-electric boat to show what they’ve built.
It’s a 24-foot, all-electric speedboat with 500 horsepower.
It has no gas fumes and a smooth, quiet ride.
“Gas boats are a lot of fun to be on and an absolute nightmare to own,” started Mitch Lee, a co-founder of the startup, which counts former Tesla and SpaceX engineers among its ranks.
“This is an incredibly hard engineering problem,” said Lee, who told me he purposely based his startup in Los Angeles to draw on the high-performing talent in the area.
The company recently moved into a 150,000-square-foot factory and headquarters in LA.
Early buyers paid around $300,000 for the limited edition Arc One. They didn’t say exactly how many but it sounded like it was around 30 of them.
Next up, the company is working on a mass-market sports boat that’s more affordable.
“This boat is far more reliable because it has far fewer moving pieces on it,” explained Lee.
You can’t help but see the resemblance to Tesla in the design. It’s sleek and minimalistic with a giant touch screen front and center. It has digital maps and music and shows speed, water temperature, depth, and more.
The battery pack in the hull is nearly 3 times the size of a typical EV.
And if you’re wondering about that whole water and electricity don’t mix thing…
“We’ve literally put these battery packs in buckets of water and dunked them to the bottom to test that they are indeed waterproof,” said Lee.
Arc wants its battery to last for a typical day’s usage, roughly 3 to 5 hours out on the water. As for recharging, many docks already have the power necessary for an overnight recharge.
Arc demoed the boat’s performance by accelerating to top speed from a standstill and with fast, tight turns.
The boat performed incredibly well and felt almost connected to the water, even through the tight turns.
I got behind the wheel and found the boat easy to navigate and steer. One neat thing about the Arc is that the throttle is completely electronic, so you can push it all the way down and the electronics will figure out the rest.
And, even though the speed is electronically limited to 40 miles an hour, that felt plenty fast, especially around those turns.
“We want to accelerate the transition to electric for the marine industry,” concluded Lee.
The company is expected to announce details on its first mass-market boat in the “next few months.”