Four Winns electric H2e named Boat of the Year Category Winner
For the third year in a row, electric boats are being recognized in the most prestigious awards of the recreational boating world.
The Four Winns H2e with the Vision Marine Technologies E-Motion 180e electric power train has been announced as the winner of the Runabout category in the 2023 Boat of the Year awards from BOATING Magazine.
For the 2023 awards the editors of BOATING tested over 100 boats in 6 different categories: Runabout, Accessible/Skiff, Center-Console, Deckboat, Pontoon and Watersports. The boats include gas boats, diesel boats, electric boats, jet boats, outboard boats, inboard boats, sterndrive boats and surface-drive boats.
Winners are selected in each category, with the overall Boat of the Year being the boat ‘that stands out in its category more than any other boat tested stands out in any other category.’
Electric boats category winners for past three years
The winner of the Accessible/Skiff category is also ‘electric-connected’. It is the Veer 13 from Mercury Marine, which was launched at the same time as the first Mercury electric outboard – the Avator 7.5e – and has been specifically designed for electric propulsion (although a fossil fuel motor can also be used.)
In the 2022 BOTY awards the Orca electric personal watercraft by Taiga won in its category, and in 2021 the overall winner was the all-electric Super Air Nautique GS22E, which marries a hull from the renowned Nautique wakeboarding boat brand with a propulsion system from its sister Correct Craft division, Ingenity electric.
The electric Four Winns was announced in the summer of 2022 as the first electric powered boat from the iconic brand and was officially launched in the spring of 2023. This was all part of a plan set out by parent company Groupe Beneteau at the 2021 Cannes Yachting Festival. The company outlined how electric would play a bigger role in brands like Beneteau and Four Winns and that the Delphia brand would be electric only by 2024.
The fossil fuel powered Four Winns H2 is one of the company’s most popular sport boats, and the Vision Marine system has been designed from the outset to provide the same kind of performance as the gas burning version.
The E-motion 180e marries a 135 kiloWatt (180 hp) motor with a twin battery pack that provides a total of 86 kiloWatt hours of energy storage. Above the continuous power 135 kW rating it can deliver 171 kW of peak power (230 hp), which is right in line with the 250 Mercury that is a popular ICE choice.
During the testing for the BOTY in Miami, the H2e took 60 kiloWatts to deliver a speed of 21 mph and run time of about one hour and 20 minutes. You can read the full boat test »» here
European Powerboat Awards now has Electric category
The recognition of Four Winns, Taiga, and Nautique/Ingenity is a great indication that electric boats are making strides in the US boating community. In Europe electric boats have been around for much longer and are now at the point where they have their own category in the European Powerboat Awards.
Last year Candela won the category and this year’s nominees sow the range of electric options:
- The Capoforte SQ 240 from Italy is a 7.38m/24 ft picnic boat that can be outfitted with the innovative Molabo ISCAD V50 that providing 50 kiloWatts of power using only 48 volts, or the smaller 3.7 kW Yamaha Harmo Electric Rim Drive.
- The 6.5m/21 ft X Shore 1 electric day cruiser that comes in an Open or Top version, both with features like a non obstructed swim platform that connects directly onto a versatile sunbed.
- The hydrofoiling Edorado (8.35 m/27 ft) with a top speed of 70 km/h and range of 74 kilometres at cruising speed.
- The ultralight Kaebon EB Eins (5.25 m/17 ft),which is designed to resemble classic motor racing cars from the 1920s and weighs in at a mere 89 kilograms.
Of course, Plugboats would be remiss if we didn’t mention that our own Gustave Trouvé Awards, launched in 2020, are the only international boat awards devoted exclusively to electric boats and boating 🙂 You can see the 2023 winners »»here
Four Winns H2e Vision Marine Technologies
