A Tesla Engineer Re-Imagines the Day Boat

What does it look like when a Tesla engineer reimagines the day boat? We check out the R30 to find out.

Day in the Sun

Can a Tesla engineer re-imagine the day boat?

When John Vo was 16 years old, he climbed aboard a 33-foot wooden boat with his family in the dead of night. Motoring away from a dock in central Vietnam, the Vos were desperate to escape the country’s communist regime. After a week at sea, and nearly capsizing in a storm, the rickety craft reached Batangas Island in the Philippines. “I landed in a Philippine refugee camp,” said Vo. “And came to the U.S., I was very fortunate.”

Vo did not take his new opportunities lightly. After studying engineering, he would work in solar and semiconductor tech before signing on as a manufacturing chief at Tesla where, for six years, he helped design battery and propulsion systems not only for Tesla but also Mercedes.

Last year, after a stint at electric truck startup Lordstown Motors, Vo decided to turn his attention back to boats. He launched a small company called the Blue Innovations Group and with a Pinellas Park, Florida based team, is busy designing a groundbreaking $300,000 dayboat called the R30.

Electric technology isn’t new, so what’s so interesting about the R30? Plenty, actually. To begin with, the 30-foot walkaround will be more powerful than any E-boat in her category—with twin 400-hp (600kw) electric motors projected to give her a top speed of around 40 knots through straight shafts. She will also bear an impressive battery capacity of 221 kwh. An extended range Ford F150 Lightning pickup, by comparison, holds 131 kwh of batteries. With that setup, Vo is predicting a an 8-hour runtime at slow speeds and a few hours at a 20-knot cruise.

To address lithium fire concerns, Blue Innovations plans on relying on lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries instead of the more volatile cobalt and magnesium lithium ions you find in most electric cars. Unlike essentially every other battery tech, LFP’s can be discharged to zero percent with no damage to the cells. They’re also good for over 4,000 full charge cycles (or 15 years in the R30’s case) versus 500 to 3,000 for more traditional lithium ions.

All that power though, is heavy, and the 10,000-pound R30 will hold between 2 and 3,000 pounds of batteries. To get around that, Vo is building an aluminum hull, which he points out, is also recyclable and much stronger than fiberglass—allowing him to offer a lifetime structural warranty. The weight of the batteries, he adds, will keep the hull more firmly planted in the water than is typical of aluminum. “85 percent of boats nowadays are made up of composite or fiberglass material,” he says. “People love it. They know how to make it look sexy. But I can’t use it. Fiberglass is 30 percent heavier. If I add two, three 1,000-pound batteries on top of that, I’m screwed.”

Another engineering advantage of electric boats, according to Vo, is that as the fuel level drops, the weight stays the same. So, rather than the sort of standardized battery pack we’re seeing in ion-powered boats like the X Shore Eelex, Vo plans to engineer his hull to distribute the batteries for optimal—and consistent—planing efficiency. In addition to fast-charge ability, the boat will boast 2,700 watts of solar panels—partly from shade-giving extensions that slide out of the console hardtop. If the boat is driven mostly on weekends, Vo reckons its owners may not typically even need to plug it in to recharge. He even plans on equipping the boat with the same sort of reverse home power plant capability Ford offers with its F150 Lightning. If the power goes out, flip a switch and run your house—for several days—with the R30’s enormous battery pack. You can’t power your house with a pair of 400 hp Mercurys—yet at least.

Feature-wise, in its current planned iteration, the R30 will offer a 50-gallon freshwater tank, a cabin to sleep at least two, a small galley, head, shower and full walkaround deck. The helm will feature two MFDs, and a yoke-style steering wheel that also integrates throttle and shifting.

The R30 is expected to come in near $300,000. But should she make it to production, her price will put her in line with other 30-footers of her amenity and performance level. Vo points out final, significant differences: ownership and maintenance costs, and simplicity. First, the fuel cost to run the boat will be negligible. Second, the boat won’t need oil changes and with very few moving parts, it won’t require much maintenance.

Vo ultimately hopes to have a mass-produced boat built in a Florida factory. His hurdles are high. Aluminum is neither cheap, nor easy to work with. Competition is ramping up daily. Though his crew has built a prototype hull, Vo doesn’t even yet have a running boat—though that’s planned to for a reveal in October. Still, he’s optimistic. “Our product has to be a disrupter,” he says. “It cannot be the same as everyone else’s. We have nothing to protect. We have nothing to lose.”

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This article originally appeared in the June 2023 issue of Power & Motoryacht magazine.

Source: https://www.powerandmotoryacht.com/boats/a-tesla-engineer-re-imagines-the-day-boat