Princeton’s Electric Boat Program

In 2018, Jaguar Vector broke the outright world and national electric speedboat records in the electron propelled V20E, clocking a top speed of 88.61 miles per hour. In July of 2022, Vision Marine shattered that number with a crack team led by racing legend Shaun Torrente, and a handsome budget, topping 109 mph. Then this past August, they beat their own record with a 116 mph run. Yet just two months later, that record was broken again—this time by a handful of college students too young to legally buy a celebratory bottle of champagne.

Big Bird, a bright orange electric speed boat developed by a team from Princeton University reached a top speed of 117.5 mph and a two-way average of 114.2 mph last October. Was there some pride crushed in this outcome? Perhaps. But one thing is for sure, the Princeton Electric Speedboating (PES) team has helped to spark an all-out race for the title of world’s fastest electric boatbuilder.

Two years ago PES’ dream of a world speed record seemed to be just that, a dream. Their effort garnered a top speed of just 25.9 mph. But then a new PES team captain, a sophomore named Andrew Robbins, joined last year. Robbins, has been tinkering with engines and racing around at 90 to 109 mph, in 700 to 2,000 horsepower Cigarettes since he was a child. His team decided to build a new boat.

“We looked at the current record, which at the time was Jaguar Vector’s 88.6 mph run in 2018 and we said, ‘Well we’re not that far off, you know, we think we can do this,’” Robbins says. “Especially given that we knew we could build a better powertrain on a more efficient hull. ”

A few cold calls explaining who they were and what they were doing led the team to a referral to J.W. Myers with Black Sheep Racing. Myers helped them secure a hull called Big Bird, a 1993 14-foot pro hydroplane, originally built for an 1,100 CC two stroke racing engine.

“The guy we had gotten it from had actually totally refurbished the hull in Detroit, so underneath the wrap it’s brand new, basically all new decks and finish—it’s a really nice boat, even being 30 years old,” Robbins says. “We knew it was extremely fast—it had been 129 mph before with the gas motor … we started to work with Flux Marine and co-developed a powertrain that would be light enough yet powerful enough to do what we need it to.”

Big Bird’s hull is strong and fairly light—she weighs in at 300 pounds. The team wanted to develop a boat in the 150- to 200-horsepower range but for a lot of systems that would have put them over 500 pounds for the electric powertrain alone—too heavy, Robbins explains. So, PES worked with Flux Marine to curate some of their own custom, lightweight hardware. Adding a 330-pound battery pack and a hundred pound powertrain motor controller and cooling system, she now comes in at just over 700 pounds.

So what kind of power is this bird wielding? A little over 190 horsepower (141kW) spinning three custom DeWalt-built propellers. This in itself is impressive, first because these props are the biggest diameter DeWalt has ever made at 18- to 21.5-inches, and secondly, because on the actual day of their record speed trial, the team was only able to utilize 182 of Big Bird’sponies due to snapping a shaft at the onset of the run.

Setting a record speed was a victorious start, but only a first step towards what PES hopes to accomplish in the future. While Big Bird, with Robbins behind the wheel, will be participating in Promoting Electric Propulsion competitions, when it comes to setting new records, they’re already working on a completely new build.

This time, the hull will be made custom by Black Sheep Racing and it’ll also be bigger; two feet longer and almost two feet wider, so the team will be gaining a lot of buoyancy to compensate for the weight of the batteries, which have them nearly 300 pounds overweight versus a comparably sized gas-powered boat. That battery weight isn’t going anywhere, so to succeed, the team must make the whole system more efficient.

“We’re taking everything we’ve learned from Big Bird and turning it up to 11 and then throwing a lot more power at it,” Robbins says, reflecting on the competition ahead with Vision Marine. “I know they’re reportedly going from 340 horsepower per motor to 800 to 900 horsepower per motor, and they’re running twins They haven’t said any numbers but I wouldn’t be surprised if we see something in the 150 mph range at the shootout this year—so that’s going to be very fast and we hope to be competitive with them.”

This article originally appeared in the February 2024 issue of Power & Motoryacht magazine.

View the original article to see embedded media.

Source: https://www.powerandmotoryacht.com/blogs/tiger-of-the-seas-princetons-electric-boat-program