Electric boat world speed record - 100 mph speedboat races

Vision Marine makes history with world’s first 100mph electric boat

August 27, 2022 Jeff Butler 1477 Views 0 Comments Octillion, The Gussies, Vision Marine

Speed On The Water magazine is reporting that a Vision Marine Technologies team has smashed the world speed record for electric boats with a 104 mile per hour run (167 km/h) at the Lake of The Ozarks Shoot Out today. The photo above capturing the moment is by Pete Boden of Shoot 2 Thrill Pix

The previous world record was 88.6 mph (142 km/h), set in 2019 by a Jaguar Vector racing boat at Lake Coniston in the UK.

The Lake of the Ozarks Shootout was started in 1988 when a bunch of local boat owners set up an informal competition to find out whose boat was fastest. It has grown since then to host 70,000 to 100,000 spectators during the weekend event and has donated more than US$1 million in the past 10 years to 34 different organizations, fire departments and charities.

More than twice last year’s speed

Vision Marine has set Shoot Out speed records in the electric boats segment for the past two years, but this year’s feat is more than double last year’s record of 49 mph (78 km./h).

Today’s world record-breaking boat, a 32-foot Hellkats Powerboat catamaran with twin Vision Marine E-Motion 180E electric outboards, was piloted by Shaun Torrente, owner of Shaun Torrente Racing in Ava, Florida. The batteries were provided by Vision Marine partner Octillion Power Systems.

Torrente told Jason Johnson of Speed On The Water “It hasn’t completely sunk in for me what we as a group just accomplished; we are the first team in history to go 100 mph on the water in an electric boat—think about that for a minute! My guys have been working on this boat non-stop for six weeks to get it here and to go out and hit that triple-digit mark today made it all worth it.”

Constant advances

Vision Marine Technologies was founded in 1995 in Montreal as the Canadian Electric Boat Company, but reimagined itself for the 21st century as VMT with a mission to build high performance electric outboard systems for recreational planing powerboats.

Since their IPO on the NASDAQ stock market in late 2020, they have made consistent and constant progress, developing relationships with major boat manufacturers in North America and setting up alliances with the companies necessary to build the motors and power train system at the scale needed to attract mainstream boat buyers.

In November of 2021 they announced a partnership with the McLaren Engineering division of Linamar Corporation, an automotive parts manufacturer and supplier with 60 plants operating around the world.

In January of this year Octillion came on board to develop customized high voltage 35 kWh electric outboard batteries for the E-Motion 180E. “There is currently a two year delivery backlog of performance batteries in the boating industry” said Alexandre Mongeon, co-founder and CEO of Vision Marine. “The Octillion agreement will allow Vision Marine to continue to scale production and secure the quantities of high density electric battery systems required in conjunction with the commencement of sales of our E- Motion outboard powertrains.”

One of the first boat companies to express interest in the E-Motion powertrain was Limestone, who will be taking orders from dealers this fall for an electrified Aquasport 21 foot Centre Console with first serial production units scheduled for delivery in spring 2023.

Four Winns, Aquasport going electric for 2023

Then, just a few weeks, ago, Vision announced a partnership with one of the world’s largest boat companies – Groupe Beneteau – that will see Vision Marine’s E-Motion 180E propulsion system in the Groupe’s Four Winns H2 OB powerboats for 2023.

The man driving the Vision team with an energy rivalling the high kiloWatt output of the motors is Alex Mongeon, an avid speed boat racer himself. A few weeks ago he told Speed on the Water “People thought we were crazy, playing around with our little electric boats, but we’ve been learning and developing…so be careful, the electric craze is coming.”

It looks like it is already here!

Torrance paid tribute to Mongeon today when he talked about taking the Hellkats 32 out tomorrow for a crack at upping the speed record to a possible 106 or 107 mph. “One thing I do know is that I’m giving Alex a ride in the boat because that man deserves it. If it wasn’t for him this wouldn’t have happened.”

The Vision Marine Story, from the pages of Plugboats

November 27, 2020