Vote in The Gussies Electric Boat Awards – Round 1

It’s time for electric boat awards!

UPDATE: Voting for The Gussies is over. You can find the results »» here.

These are all of the nominated boats in Category I. You can click on any of the images or ‘more info’ links to visit their sites and find out more

With the growth in the electric boat industry over the past few years and the quickening pace of innovation, the time is right for an awards program that recognizes and honours the achievements and innovations of the individuals and organizations that are creating, designing and producing the electric boats, motors and associated systems that will help change our world in the coming years and decades.

To that end, Plugboats announces the inaugural Gustave Trouvé Awards for Excellence in Electric Boat and Boating.

Who is Gustave Trouvé? And why should electric boat awards be named after him? Well…

Trouvé was an astoundingly prolific inventor with over 75 patents to his name. He took one of those inventions – an electric motor for a bicycle – down to the Seine River on May 26, 1881, connected it to a battery, attached the contraption to his boat ‘Le Teléphone’, set off down the Seine and made history. This was the world’s first outboard motor, attached to one of the world’s earliest rechargeable batteries, transporting a boat in silence along one of the world’s great waterways.

So May 26, 2020 – 139 years after this event – seemed a fitting day to announce the inaugural Gustave Trouvé International Awards. And July 26 – the 118th anniversary of Gustave Trouvé’s death in 1902, seemed a fitting day to announce the winners.

Kevin Desmond, the man who literally wrote the book on electric boats: ‘Electric Boats and Ships, A History’, and also wrote ‘Gustave Trouve: French Electrical Genius’ has this to say about the idea:

“Very pleased indeed with this initiative, not merely to promote innovative excellence with electric boats, but as another real step in the rehabilitation of the French Edison or Tesla, inventor of over 70 machines, forgotten for over a century, but now on the comeback.”

Awards for Excellence in Electric Boats: The Gussies

Now,  like all good awards, the Gustave Trouvé Awards for Excellence in Electric Boats and Boating needs a names that is a bit easier to remember. So we are calling them ‘The Gussies’.

The idea for the Gussies started to come together in late 2019 and the initial plan was to have The Gussies include a combination of juried voting by a number of international electric boat experts with public polling and have the award presentations at the 2020 Venice Boat Show and e-Regata in early June.

Unfortunately, some unexpected circumstances that we are all painfully aware of got in the way.

Online vote for best electric boats

So, like many other events in the past few months, The Gussies are going virtual.

Instead of the original concept of a combined jury and public vote, The Gussies is now totally a public vote. Also, the number of categories has been cut from six to three.

Which means you get to decide who gets honoured in these categories:

• Achievement in Electric Boats under 8 metres / 26 feet)
• Achievement in Electric Boats over 8 metres / 26 feet)
• Achievement in Electric Boats designed for paying passengers

The Gussies: Three Stages

To facilitate this, there will be three stages of The Gussies.

Stage 1: May 26 to June 2 – Nominee Suggestions

This stage is over! On to Stage 2!

Stage 2: June 3 to July 2 – First Round Voting

In this stage, votes will be tabulated for all of the Nominee Suggestions.

The top 6 boats with most votes move into the Finals

First Round voting ends July 2

Stage 3: July 4 – July 24 – Finals

With the determination of the 6 finalists, the real voting begins. Tabulations start again to decide the Gussie winners. Voting ends July 24 and the announcement of The Gussies Winners will take place on July 27 – the 118th anniversary of Gustave Trouvé’s death in 1902.