New electric boat record as hydrofoiling Candela C-8 crosses Baltic Sea

Hydrofoiling boat manufacturer Candela has set a new electric boat record, taking their C-8 model 150 nautical miles (172 mi / 275 km) across the Baltic Sea from Stockholm, Sweden to Åland, Finland. It is the first time an all-electric boat has crossed the Baltic, and the team took the record one step further by returning to Stockholm the same day.

“The aim was to demonstrate that zero-emission sea travel is not only possible today, but that foiling electric ships and boats are so much cheaper to operate than fossil-fuelled vessels,” said Gustav Hasselskog, CEO and founder of Candela. The proof is in the crossing: the Candela C-8 had 85% lower costs than a fossil-fuel-powered boat.

Fossil fuel chase boat had range anxiety

It wasn’t just 15 times cheaper than gas/petrol, there was also less range anxiety, continued Hasselskog, “We did have anxiety, but not for the Candela. The irony is that the photographer’s gasoline-powered chase boat had to refuel six times during the trip, while we only charged three times!”

The record trip was made Thursday, September 12 in the latest version of the Candela C-8, equipped with a Polestar battery. The trip was made mostly with the existing charging infrastructure, and in partnership with Kempower, a charging solutions provider.

Starting out at 6 a.m. from the Stockholm Frihamn port authority in Candela’s hometown, they made a charging stop in Kapellskär – roughly the halfway point of the journey – and reached Mariehamn, the capital and largest town of the Åland Islands, an autonomous region of Finland, at lunchtime.

Kempower has been working with various charging companies like Aqua superPower and utilities like Norways’s Plug Power to provide high speed marine charging stations in Nordic countries.

Check out the Plugboats map of high speed chargers.

The Baltic trip was made mostly with the existing, non-high speed charging infrastructure. In Kapellskär, the Candela charged with a Kempower Movable Charger, a 40-kW wheeled charger connected to the existing power grid at the harbour.

In Finland the boat was plugged into the marina’s standard three-phase outlet, which took a few hours while the team met with local officials and refuelled themselves. In the evening at 6 p.m., the hydrofoiling speedboat started flying back to Sweden, topped up in Kapellskär and returned home in dense fog at 11.30 p.m.

Not Candela’s first electric boat record 

“Kempower is proud to contribute to the electrification of boating and help create greener waterways. Electric boats combined with hydrofoiling offer the best possible efficiency. Kempower’s DC fast charging solutions are ideal for electric boating, and our Kempower Movable Charger is a plug-and-play solution that integrates seamlessly with the electrical grids already available in many marinas,” says Antti Vuola, Director, Market Segments, Kempower.

This isn’t the first time Candela has set distance and endurance records and challenged preconceptions about electric boats. About a year ago they covered 420 nautical miles in 24 hours. That is approximately the distance between London and Amsterdam but it was done going back and forth between two points in Stockholm 40 nm apart.

In that case the power did not come from the onshore grid, but from a Voltpack mobile battery storage system by Northvolt, which is owned by Volvo and Swedish EV maker Polestar. The 281 kWh battery packs are about 250 x 170 x 90 cm (4′ x 8′ x 3′) and were coupled with a DC charging station from Plug. The idea was to showcase how DC charging networks for boats could work in archipelagos and remote coastal areas.

Read how the Candela C-8 covered 485 miles (780 km) in 24 hours

The Voltari 260 electric boat actually went further on a single charge than the C-8 did in this trip, but that was at a speed of 4.4 kt (5 mph / 8kmh) when it did the 79 nm (91 mi / 145 km)  journey from Key Largo, Florida to Bimini, Bahamas in 19 hours.

The Voltari is standard planing boat where the boat has to constantly overcome the resistance and friction of the hull against the water, while Candela’s hydrofoiling technology lifts the boat above the water, enabling it to achieve both speed and distance. This ability is one of the reasons the C-8 won the 2022 Gustave Trouvé Electric Boat Awards in the Up to 8 Meter/26 Feet category.

Massive cost reductions for sea transport

Hydrofoiling is a great advantage for pleasure boats, but it also enables massive cost reductions for sea transport, which was proven on the Baltic Sea ride when the electric costs were tallied up. The similar size gasoline-powered chase boat on the trip had to pay 750€ ($835 US) to fuel up, while the Candela C-8 consumed 213 kWh of electricity, at a cost of about 45€ ($50).

That’s makes a huge difference for public transport boats that are operating constantly, and governments around the globe are adopting Candela’s 30 passenger P-12 electric hydrofoiling ferry.

This fall the P-12 will begin operating on the Ekerö-Stockholm City Hall route, where it is expected to not only save money but also halve travel times as its minimal wake allows it to travel in the inner city where standard ferries have to slow down dramatically to adhere to no-wake zones.

In Berlin, private operator Reederei Riedel has purchased a P-12 that will connect the East Side Gallery, near Ostbahnhof, with the cultural hub Funkhaus. Candela also recently announced a deal to electrify the water transport network in Saudi Arabia’s giant NEOM project, as well as ferries sold to a protected national park in New Zealand.

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Candela in the pages of Plugboats  Candela boats for sale in Plugboats Marketplace