Riva El-Iseo: Is this the coolest electric boat money can buy?

Riva made its name building beautiful mahogany sportboats powered by big petrol engines, but the new Riva El-Iseo is powered by an electric motor. Phil Draper reports

The original Riva Iseo was first shown back at Cannes 2011, and like the larger Aquariva, it has earned its place as an enduring modern classic. Around 70 of these beautiful sterndrive-propelled 27-footers have been delivered to date, but while its styling has barely changed over the past 13 years, the latest model packs a very different powertrain.

The El-Iseo isn’t just Riva’s first all-electric craft, it’s the first battery-powered sportsboat built by any of the long-established European boat yards. The big question is whether this is just an expensive toy built to satisfy a handful of wealthy clients or a genuine first step on the path to a greener future? We flew out to Italy to put it through its paces and see how it fares.

Musical conductors

The Riva El-Iseo started life as an engineering prototype at the 2022 Cannes Yachting Festival, but this is the real deal, a full production-ready RCD-approved boat you can buy off the shelf, albeit at a suitably elevated price tag.

A 250kW Parker electric motor and a pair of 75kWh battery banks replace the usual 300hp petrol or diesel engines

The Riva El-Iseo is very similar to its petrol- or diesel-powered sisters, save for a revised windscreen, cockpit layout and what lies beneath the sunpad. The heart of the matter is a Parker GVM310 AC motor, rated for a continuous 250kW (335hp) and a temporary peak of 300kW (402hp).

Then there’s a sealed and liquid-cooled 800V 150kWh lithium battery bank, a salt water heat exchanger, a voltage regulator, an inverter, and plenty of heavy-duty insulation, wiring and hosing, as well as various fire and gas detection/extinguishing systems.

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The battery pack consists of two independent banks, which means the failure of one doesn’t stop the boat completely. The only familiar sight is the single Mercury Racing Bravo X3R sterndrive leg bolted to the transom.

There are three cruising modes – Adagio, Andante and Allegro – which the musical among you will recognise as slow, moderate and fast. Adagio restricts acceleration and limits the speed to just five knots for marina work and displacement cruising.

In this mode the battery should last all day, giving an effective cruising range of 50nm. Andante allows swifter acceleration but caps the top speed at 25 knots, giving a range of 25nm at 25 knots. Finally, Allegro delivers full acceleration and an artificially limited top speed of 40 knots at 4,000rpm, but only for around half an hour.

The all-digital dashboard keeps track of power usage and remaining range

You can select these cruise modes manually, but when the battery level drops to 20%, the system steps in and it slips automatically from Allegro to Andante. Carry on until the battery reserve drops to 5% and it will trip once again into Adagio, giving you another two to three nautical miles to get you home.

Effortless power

Handling is crisp. It accelerates more quickly than most petrol-powered runabouts of this size, with no suggestion of cavitation and a seamless surge of torque from rest all the way to 4,000rpm. The custom dashboard is all digital, plus there’s the choice of a 9in or 12in Simrad nav-screen amidships.

A conventional-style gear-shift/throttle delivers forward and reverse selection as well as power. The steering is by Xenta and there’s an automated Zipwake trim-correction system.

There were five of us in the boat during our brief half-hour test session, taking the weight from an already hefty 3.75 tonnes to just over four tonnes. Mostly we were blasting around at or close to top speed.

Three different driver modes allow varying degrees of performance

We set off with the batteries at 80% and came back showing 34%, which when we plugged into a fast-charger back at the Sarnico yard’s quay, the boat’s instruments informed us it would take 1 hour and 30 minutes to restore to 100%. However, Riva quotes 75 minutes for a more practical 20-80% fast charge, while a slow charge on shore power would take eight hours or more.

While the El-Iseo is certainly quiet, and much quieter than an ICE installation at displacement speeds, there is still some noise once it starts planing. Not being a foiler, its hull generates quite a bit of sound simply by moving through the water and there is a fair degree of whining from the sterndrive, which would normally be drowned out by the roar of a petrol engine.

Riva’s El-Iseo is presently the only electric boat on the market to be RCD rated as Cat B (most of its rivals are C or D). In theory this means it can cope with winds up to F8 and 13ft seas, although it’s hard to envisage any owners choosing to put that to the test.

Price of change

Riva never likes to publish prices but there’s no glossing over the fact this is a very expensive boat, even by Riva standards. We understand it will cost over €1.1m VAT paid, compared to around €480,000 for a 300hp petrol one.

It’s hard to make sense of paying twice as much money for something with broadly similar performance and considerably shorter range than the petrol version but the El-Iseo is less about what it does and more about what it says – both for the people who buy it and the company that makes it.

The chances are its intended customers already have a waterside villa (possibly on a lake where ICE boats are banned) or a megayacht in need of a stylish tender, where range and price is largely irrelevant and the cachet of ferrying guests around in a cutting-edge, fume-free, ‘eco-friendly’ Riva is reason enough to splash the cash.

For Riva and its parent company, the Ferretti Group, it’s an equally bold statement that it’s prepared to invest in electric and hybrid drivetrains to power future generations of craft. Luxury is nearly always expensive but E-luxury, as Ferretti is labelling it, is on another level.

Riva El-Iseo specifications

LOA: 27ft 5in (8.35m)
Beam: 8ft 2in (2.50m)
Draft: 3ft 3in (1.00m)
Displacement: 3.75 tonnes
Motor: 1x 250kW Parker Hannifin GVM310
Max Speed: 40 knots
Range: 25nm @ 25 knots
RCD: Cat B for 6

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