By: Scott Way
Back in November we highlighted a star-studded electric boat company that had a serious lineup of celebrity investors. At that time, Arc Boats had just received a fresh $30 million in funding from celebs including Will Smith, Kevin Durant, and Sean 'Diddy' Combs. That hefty chunk of R&D cash all but ensured Arc would have first crack at the burgeoning electric boat market.
The issue at that time, though, was that Arc didn't yet have a working prototype. Now they do. This week the company revealed to Robb Report that their first pre-production vessel was put through testing on Lake Arrowhead in California.
Arc has been moving at an accelerated pace since its inception, having taken only 11 months from formation until they received financial backing. That may have been aided by Arc's impressive board of directors, which includes execs from Space-X and Tesla, among others. The round of Series A funding was led by Greg Reichow, the former VP of production at Tesla and current partner at Eclipse Ventures. Arc itself was cofounded by Mitch Lee and Ryan Cook, both former engineers at SpaceX.
Now just over a year old, their first boat model is already generating impressive results. Dubbed the Arc One, the 24' runabout was upgraded to a larger 220 kWh battery pack than its early prototypes. The Tesla Model Y, for reference, uses only a 75 kWh battery (and pushes 480 hp while weighing 4080 lbs). The larger battery is expected to yield a runtime up to about 5 hours without recharge. In terms of power, the pre-production model also got a boost -- upgrading to a significantly larger motor now pushing over 500 hp. The new powerplant gave the Arc One a top speed over 40 mph (32 knots) in testing, which would put it on par with many traditional gas-powered boats of similar size and style.
“The boat accelerates so nicely that you’ll never want to go backward,” Audrey Gaither, one of the vehicle engineers, told Robb Report after their recent testing.
One of the initial question marks about the Arc One was its shape and design layout, which could be best described as angular and eccentric. The latest iteration has upgrades in this department as well, with a redesigned lightweight aluminum hull that's more in line with its contemporaries. It's still angular, and definitely an outlier, but that may be a wise marketing decision given Arc's position in the industry.
The expected retail price for the Arc One is about $300,000 USD, but those looking to reserve one only have to put down a $1000 deposit. That should give excited owners ample time to maneuver assets around before the Arc's expected release later this summer.
You can get a look at the Arc One in the video below:
Where would one plug this boat in if you were rack stored or at a marina dock? And if on a overnight trip would most marina's be able to charge up these batteries with a 30 amp cord hookup?