The motor
Torque from a standstill, and nothing to warm up
A combustion engine makes its power at the top of the rev range. An electric motor makes maximum torque at zero rpm — which is why an electric boat leaves a dock differently.
Power where you use it
Full torque available the instant you touch the throttle.
No clutch take-up, no waiting for revs, no lag between decision and thrust. Coming alongside in wind, that is the difference between a manoeuvre and an incident.
Quiet enough to change the day
No exhaust note, no vibration through the deck.
You hear the hull and the water instead of a diesel. Conversation at normal volume while under way. This is the feature owners describe first and brochures mention last.
Rated for continuous duty
Sized to run all day, not to win a spec sheet.
Continuous rating is the number that matters on a boat. Peak figures are for short bursts; the rating you cruise on is what sets your range and what the thermal design has to survive.
Almost nothing to service
No oil, no filters, no impeller, no fuel system to winterise.
Fewer moving parts than a gearbox. The maintenance schedule looks closer to a domestic appliance than to a marine diesel, and that shows up as owner cost every single season.
The pod
Thrust, steering and protection in one unit
Putting the drive in the water rather than in the boat buys space, quiet and a cleaner installation. It also means the drive has to survive the sea.
The engine well, reclaimed
The hull is designed around the pack, not around an engine bay.
Space normally lost to a block and a fuel tank becomes stowage and freeboard — one of the reasons a Marea does not simply look like a petrol boat with the engine swapped out.
Sealed for immersion
Built for a drive that lives permanently in the water.
Seals, bearings and connector entries are the parts that decide whether an electric drive is a ten-year component or a warranty problem. They get the attention accordingly.
Propeller matched to the hull
Pitch and diameter chosen for this hull, not inherited from a catalogue.
Propeller match is what turns a motor rating into actual boat speed — and it sets the power-versus-speed curve the range prediction is built on.
Corrosion, taken seriously
Materials chosen for salt water, with a defined anode schedule.
Electric drives bring galvanic considerations a diesel installation does not. Specifying that up front, rather than discovering it, is the difference between a good first season and a bad one.
The pack
Lithium iron phosphate, chosen deliberately
LFP gives up some energy density against other lithium chemistries. In exchange it gives you cycle life and a far better thermal safety story — the right trade for a boat.
Sixteen cell groups in series
A 16S2P LFP pack of 280 Ah, nominally around 51 volts.
Sized for a full day of realistic use rather than a headline range figure achieved at drift speed.
Why LFP, and not the alternative
Thousands of cycles, and a chemistry that does not want to burn.
LFP is markedly more tolerant of heat and abuse than the nickel chemistries used in cars. On a boat — enclosed, far from a fire service, often left unattended on a mooring — that trade is not a close call.
The flat curve, handled honestly
LFP sits near the same voltage from 10% to 90% charged.
That flatness is precisely why cheap battery gauges on electric boats are so unreliable. BoatPlay counts current in and out and corrects against voltage, rather than reading a number off a curve that barely moves.
Replaceable, not disposable
A pack built to be serviced at module level.
One weak group should be a service item, not a reason to replace an entire pack. You design for that at the start or you never get it.
Battery management
The pack is watched cell by cell
A battery management system is not a fuel gauge. It is the thing standing between a chemistry and its worst day.
Every cell group measured
All sixteen groups monitored individually, not as a lump.
A pack is only as good as its weakest group. Watching the average tells you nothing until it is already too late.
Limits enforced, not suggested
Under-voltage at 2.50 V. Over-voltage at 3.65 V. Over-temperature at 45 °C.
Cross a limit and the management system acts. It does not wait for a screen to notice or for a person to be looking at it.
Imbalance caught early
A spread over 0.30 V between groups raises a fault.
Cells drift apart slowly and then suddenly. Catching the drift is how a service visit replaces a failure.
It reports to the boat
Pack state goes onto the boat's data bus in standard marine format.
Not a proprietary app in a corner. The pack talks to the helm, to your phone and to the range prediction over the same open standard everything else uses.
Thermal design
It protects itself before it asks you to
Every electric drive has a limit. What separates a good one is what it does as it approaches that limit — and whether it tells you first.
Graceful derate, not a cliff
At 85 °C the controller limits output and raises a flag.
Power reduces and you keep steerage way. It never simply stops — losing propulsion because a component got warm is not an acceptable failure on the water.
You see it coming
Temperature is on the helm display before it is a problem.
A derate that arrives unannounced feels like a fault. The same derate with ten minutes of warning is just information.
Cooling matched to the duty
Sized for sustained cruise on a hot day, not for a bench test.
Thermal headroom is the most commonly overstated figure in electric propulsion. We would rather quote a rating we can hold all afternoon.
Power follows the propeller law
Double the speed and you need roughly eight times the power.
This is why "how fast can I go and still get home" is a real question rather than simple arithmetic — and why the range prediction answers at several speeds instead of giving you one number.
Charging
Two ways in, both visible
Sun on the T-top and 220 volts at the dock. Both accounted for in the same energy picture.
450 Wp solar through an MPPT
The T-top array works whenever there is daylight.
Not enough to run the boat; easily enough to hold the pack up on a mooring, carry the house loads and take the edge off a day's use. The tracker extracts meaningfully more than a plain regulator would.
3 kW shore charging
Standard 220 V dock power, no special installation.
Plug in overnight and leave it. Charge state and estimated ready time are on your phone before you leave the house.
Charge and load, netted honestly
Solar coming in and house load going out, shown against each other.
The number that matters is what is actually happening to the pack — one figure, not two you have to subtract in your head.
Charging is part of the boat
Both sources report through the same system as everything else.
Solar yield and shore charging appear on the energy page and in your trip history, not in a separate app from a separate supplier.
Safety
High voltage, treated like high voltage
The drivetrain carries enough energy to matter. Every protective function acts in hardware, independent of any computer.
The main contactor
One decisive way to disconnect the pack from everything downstream.
It is also what makes the man-overboard cut-off nearly free on this boat — a petrol boat needs extra equipment to achieve the same thing.
Isolation monitoring
The system watches for current finding a path it should not.
In a salt-water environment this is not optional. It is the early warning for the failure mode that matters most.
Propulsion never depends on software
The computer can fail without taking the drive with it.
BoatPlay is an information layer. Steering, propulsion and the contactor have proven paths that do not pass through it.
Documented failure modes
Every way this can fail is written down, with its consequence.
Reviewed by our naval architect and electrical engineer, and rehearsed on the bench before the boat meets water.
Specification
The numbers
The drive as it stands today. Figures still in validation are marked as such rather than estimated.
| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| Motor rated power | 10 kW |
| Maximum shaft speed | 3,000 rpm |
| Power curve | Cube law vs shaft speed |
| Thermal derate threshold | 85 °C |
| Pack configuration | 16S2P LFP |
| Pack capacity | 280 Ah |
| Nominal pack voltage | 51.2 V |
| Cell under-voltage limit | 2.50 V |
| Cell over-voltage limit | 3.65 V |
| Imbalance fault threshold | 0.30 V |
| Pack over-temperature limit | 45 °C |
| Solar array | 450 Wp via MPPT |
| Shore charger | 3 kW, 220 V |
| Motor type and configuration | Pending final release |
| Continuous and peak power | Pending final release |
| Peak torque | Pending final release |
| Peak efficiency | Pending final release |
| Cooling method | Pending final release |
| Ingress protection rating | Pending final release |
| Drive mass | Pending final release |
| Gear ratio and propeller | Pending final release |
| Usable pack energy | Pending final release |
| Range at cruise | Pending final release |
| Sound level under way | Pending final release |
Figures marked pending are being validated on the water rather than calculated. We would rather publish them late than publish them wrong.
Beta Pacific
The drive decides what the boat can promise
Range, quiet, service cost and safety all begin here. Everything BoatPlay tells you about the boat is only as honest as the drive underneath it.
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