KIRKLAND, Wash. — Lake Washington in August may be known for its gas-fueled, ear-splitting thunderboats, but this week it also played host to an electric-powered lightning boat that was much easier on the ears.
“One thing you’ll note is that we’re able to have a conversation,” pilot Miriam Morris said as she revved up the Arc One electric boat past 40 mph. “This would not be possible on a gas boat.”
Arc brought the 24-foot luxury cruiser up to Kirkland’s Carillon Point dock to give potential buyers in the Seattle area — and at least one landlubber journalist — an up-close look and a quick jaunt around Lake Washington.
The Arc One, designed for lake outings, is the first in what the company hopes will eventually become a full line of electric boats. California-based Arc has already sold out the limited number of boats it’s been building over the past year (in the “low double-digits,” said Ted Herringshaw, the company’s head of product). But it’s planning to raise the production rate for a new model next year, thanks to a $30 million funding round and a bigger factory that’s set to open in Torrance, Calif.
Arc, which was founded in early 2021, is just one of several startups targeting the luxury electric boat market. Another leader in the field is Seattle-based Pure Watercraft, which is partnering with GM on pontoon boats and other products. Candela (which builds electric-powered hydrofoils) and X Shore are in the race as well — although Herringshaw doesn’t regard it as a race.
“It’s early days for the entire industry,” Herringshaw told me as we plied Lake Washington’s waters. “We really think of the existing gas-boat producers as our competition, more so than the other electric-boat companies. We’re all friends a little bit. We’re all sort of on the same side here.”
He said Arc brought its road show to Lake Washington because the Puget Sound region — like other target markets including Lake Tahoe, Salt Lake City and Austin, Texas — has the right kind of demographics.
“Seattle’s a dream market for us,” he said. “It’s a combination of how prevalent boating culture is, and obviously the integration with water all around the city. The tech crowd, you know. The pretty high EV adoption here, and plenty of focus on keeping waterways clean, and higher efficiency, and lower emissions.”
The fact that we were able to carry on an interview while Morris was zipping around the lake seemed so natural that I forgot how quiet electric boating could be. It wasn’t until Morris offered me a turn at the controls that I realized how different the experience is from the gas-powered norm.
First, there’s the dashboard. Instead of the array of levers and dials I remember from ride-alongs in years past, there’s a single touchscreen in front and a single throttle lever on the side of the hull. The layout reminded me of the streamlined look of a Tesla electric car’s dashboard.
“We did want to embrace that minimalist esthetic — to build something that was pretty different from what’s out there in the industry,” Herringshaw said.
Pushing the throttle forward raises the amps on the 375-kilowatt electric motor, which is equivalent to the power of a 500-hp engine. I was prepared for the motor’s hum to get louder as I accelerated, but I wasn’t prepared for the sensation of having the bow rise up before me as we pushed through the water. “Yikes,” I said.
Within seconds, we were zooming along at more than 40 mph, which is close to the boat’s top speed. But the boat handled as smoothly as my hybrid Ford Maverick truck, even when I banked to the left to stay far clear of the only other boat in sight.
“I could get used to this,” I told Morris, moments before I handed back the controls.
Herringshaw explained that the 3,000 pounds of batteries beneath the floorboards contributed to the aluminum craft’s stability. Those battery packs account for nearly half of Arc One’s total weight of 6,500 pounds.
The 220 kilowatt-hours of electricity that can be stored in the batteries are enough for about five hours of typical cruising — more if you’re trawling around at 5 mph, and less if you’re zipping around at 40 mph.
It takes 12 to 14 hours to charge up the boat using the type of Level 2 EV charger typically available for home installation. Specialized marine superchargers can do the job in one to two hours, Herringshaw said.
By now you’re probably wondering about the bottom line. List price for the Arc One is $300,000, which doesn’t fit the budget of this landlubber journalist. Gas-powered boats of a similar size can be had for significantly less. But Arc is banking on a Tesla-type market for electric-powered luxury cruisers.
“We sell boats direct to consumers, so we have a relationship with all of our customers directly,” Herringshaw said. “And then, this is a pretty advanced boat, so there’s something on the order of 50,000 data points per second flowing back to HQ about the boat’s performance. So whenever there’s any type of fault, false alarm or not, Arc knows about it long before the customer does, in just about every case.”
For what it’s worth, Candela’s C-8 Polestar sells for $450,000, the X Shore 1 is priced at $139,000, and Pure Watercraft’s entry-level pontoon boat goes for the low, low price of $75,000.
Herringshaw said Arc’s long-term roadmap points the way toward less sticker shock for boaters. “We intend for this to be the most expensive boat that we sell,” he said as we headed back to the dock on the Arc One. “As we dial in production and as we grow up as a company, we’re able to offer better product at cheaper prices.”
Check out these detail photos by Kirkland real-estate broker Brian Hopper — who took the Arc One test drive with his wife, Nicole Hopper, just after I did:
