The Sprinter Treatment

Just up Interstate 26 from me in North Charleston, sits Mercedes’ sprawling Sprinter van plant. The 222-acre U.S. build factory for the venerable Merc hauler—along with the new battery propelled E-Sprinter—also serves as a sort of hub for all manner of companies that create all manner of modular add-ons or build out special edition Sprinters for camping, contracting, medical work, and of course, people moving. What has evolved here is a plug-and-play ecosystem that not only bolsters the hell out of Charleston’s economy but has created a hive of creative Sprinter engineering solutions for near any use you could possibly imagine.

Now I’m not saying this is a direct parallel, but with the reveal of its new Pro series, X Shore seems to be tearing a page out of Mercedes’ playbook in creating an adaptable, modular, electric platform for the commercial small boat market. On September 14, 2023 the company’s CEO Jenny Keisu and product development director Nicolas Broberg announced that X Shore has built the first of what it hopes will become a slew of battery-driven solutions for commercial entities. Built at its factory in Nyköping, Sweden, the X Shore Pro will be offered in an “Open” or “Cabin” configuration that you can then customize as you need. Initially, X Shore will offer its own upfit solutions, but if this project is successful, I could see it leading to a mini ecosystem of its own.

The X Shore Pro shares much of its bones, dimensions and drivetrain with X Shore’s already proven, 26-foot Eelex 8000 recreational platform—a boat launched in 2020. According to Broberg, upwards of 20 percent of current Eelex sales are already for commercial entities. Safe Harbor Marinas here in the states already, for example, owns over 100 of the boats which it uses for maintenance and shuttling folks around. X Shore hopes the Pro ups that ante. “Now this work boat option actually entails a little bit wider scope,” says Broberg. “To more commercial focused businesses like diving, boat taxi, passenger transports, fishing tours, or for fish farms and things like that. There’s also security, harbor patrolling, towing assistance and some light cargo.”

Like the Eelex, the Pro will be driven by a 170 kW (228 horsepower) electric motor. With few moving parts, the drivetrain is a model of simplicity and efficiency. Fuel comes in the form of 63 kWh Kreisel lithium ion battery packs, but where the Eelex has two battery packs, the Pro will bear three. Plugged into a true fast-charge system, the boat could be recharged in a few hours. On a standard 30 to 50 amp, 240-volt marine outlet, she’d fully charge overnight. Range-wise, X Shore generally relies on the equation that the twin-battery-packed Eelex will run for 100NM at 5-7 knots with a top speed just north of 30 knots. On the Pro, Keisu said, range will vary considerably based on usage, but it’ll definitely be north of what you’d get from the standard Eelex. What does that mean in practical “fuel cost” terms? Here in Charleston, electricity costs around 13 cents/kWh, so an X Shore Pro “fill-up” that could take the boat between 50 and 100NM, will cost a marine contractor around $24. With marina gas costing around $4-5 per gallon, one could imagine plenty of commercial users, who don’t need to go more than 50NM a day, being mighty interested in this configuration.

The Pro also features extra reinforced rub rails all around along with a flattened and plum bow with thick padding for nose-first docking—along with stairs at the bow so passengers can embark/disembark right from the front of the boat. The epoxy hull is a tough, high-sided (4-foot, 8-inch), deep V built to take on the sort of pounding, short-period head seas that northern latitude gales can instantly generate. With her stern drive, she can be pulled right up to a dock to allow for easy loading/offloading of gear or cargo.

Helm wise, “the base Pro model features all of the features we have on the Eelex,” says Keisu. “Basically, the Garmin watch control for example, and the large screen and the multi-functional wheel—it’s all there. But we’ve added a bunch of features I would say that are related and more relevant for the pro segment—autopilot and radar control well integrated into the Garmin system. So, if you have the autopilot course engaged then while you’re out doing whatever work outside, you can still adjust your course on your watch. We also added the stern thruster—so we have a single joystick that controls the stern and bow thruster, so you can actually do singlehanded docking without any kind of drama.”

The “open” model boat is just that—pretty much open for anything you can throw into her. She’ll feature an optional track system in the deck like the one on the Eelex, for securing down everything from seats to dive tanks to fuel tanks, to toolboxes. You’ll also be able to spec her to provide inverter-supplied A/C shore power for tools and appliances. Her stern is low and indeed, open, so the boat will both shed water during a gale and allow for easy cargo loading.

The “Cabin” model features a modular cabin with optional climate control and even a heated front windshield. Her rear can be completely opened to allow cargo to be easily loaded/offloaded. In the case of this, X Shore’s first Cabin release, the interior is filled with a slew of fairly standard issue, perimeter-running seats that have turned her into an aquatic school bus that will soon be hauling kids around the Swedish Archipelago.

Price-wise, Keisu and Broberg were at this point, non-committal. Keisu pointed out that the Eelex 8000 costs around $330,000 U.S. With a third battery pack and so many options from bare bones to climate controlled, the Pro will generally be more expensive, but price will vary widely based on whether you need a simple open runabout or something more specialized or luxurious. Then there are possible governmental subsidies for low emissions transportation. The Swedish school district buying this first bus boat, for example, will have 60 percent of its costs covered by various grants and programs that aim to cut carbon output and petroleum-based emissions.

Pollution reduction, and quiet, said Keisu, are of course also the main reasons for the existence of this boat. “When you’re diving with a petroleum boat and you go out, you scare away all the marine wildlife,” she says. “And you have to wait for a while for all the marine wildlife, to come back so you can actually dive down and interact with them. Now you will be able to have a silent boat go out with that. This is sort of perfect for those kind of use cases.”

By 2030, Mercedes plans to phase out of petroleum powered automobiles—with its vans going full electric even sooner than that. Keisu wants X Shore to be at the forefront of a similar evolution in boating. “For X Shore, the reason to exist for us, is that we want to transition the boating industry to Net Zero. We love sailing yachts. We love electric boats of any kind out there, but we want to replace the ICE (internal combustion) motors because they are incredibly dirty in terms of CO2 emissions, noise pollution, and also freshwater pollution. There’s tons of stuff we want to do. We started out with Eelex…that’s been around for three years now—and more or less all over the world. We’ve seen different kinds of weather, different kinds of temperatures, different kinds of use cases where we just learned tons because, we’ve developed on that platform for many years. So, it’s natural for us to evolve into the segment. And to what you’re saying—making this on the Eelex platform that is already hugely modular. We can use the same power train that we’ve been using for years, so businesses don’t have to feel like they’re a guinea pig. I think that is just a huge benefit.”