Templar e-boats lands 1st commercial contract
The Grayline Hop-On-Hop-Off Sightseeing tour in Victoria, Canada, has ordered 6 all-electric Templar boats for cruises around the city’s picturesque harbour and is planning to add 6 more if all goes well.
Templar Marine was started just last year about 500 kms from Victoria in Kelowna, British Columbia by Mark Fry. As we wrote in March when Templar delivered their first consumer boat, he called on his years of experience as a professional yacht captain and head of a 300 school international yacht training company to develop the concept of fully electric boats that use a single hull design adaptable for a variety of uses.
The Templar26 (8 meters) is available as:
- a family day cruiser with swim platform, full size bathroom and a centrally heated enclosure
- a sedan model for overnight trips that adds a large forward sleeping berth
- and the water taxi/small ferry design that will be used in Victoria.
Boats will also be used for quiet dinner cruises
John Wilson, President of Grayline Sightseeing Victoria which provided Templar with this first commercial contract, told Andrew Duffy of the city’s Time Colonist newspaper “They are pretty cool – spacious, quiet, equipped with a bathroom and they turn on a dime. They have lots of power and run very smoothly. It’s also a very stable ride, so it’s great for seniors to get on and off.”
Victoria, which is one of the few places in Canada that has a temperate climate year round, is popular with retirees and seniors tourists.
In addition to the hop-on-hop-off harbour cruises, the silent 12 passenger boats will be used for evening dinner cruises, similar to the solar powered dinner cruises on Prince Edward Island, 5,700 km away on the other side of the country.
The Templar taxis are powered by the Torqeedo Cruise 10.0 RS and the accompanying Power 48-5000 lithium battery with 5 Kilowatt hour capacity. At a comfortable harbour-cruising, scenery-admiring speed of 5 knots they can go about 9 hours between recharges.
