Historic Paris Olympics electric boats Opening Ceremonies

July 25, 2024 Jeff Butler 0 Comments FinX, Torqeedo

For the first time in the history of the Olympic Summer Games, the Opening Ceremony will not take place in a stadium. Instead, the 10,500 participating athletes and nations will be travelling along the Seine river in a fleet of 150 boats of all sizes, and 31 of those boats – 1 in 5 – will be electric.

It was on the Seine in 1881 that prolific French Inventor Gustave Trouvé was on the Seine working on his prototype electric boat ‘Le Teléphone’ when he decided it would be more productive to detach the motor and take it home each night to tinker on in his Paris apartment. Eureka! It was the invention of the outboard motor.

We’re pretty sure M. Trouvé (his name carries on in The Gussies International Electric Boat Awards) would be very pleased to see these 31 e-boats winding 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) through the centre of Paris 143 years later.

Gustave Trouvé’s electric boat – Le Téléphone

The parade will start at 19:30 CEST and is expected to last more than three hours, going from the Austerlitz bridge beside the Jardin des Plantes, around Île Saint Louis and Île de la Cité and winding up at the Trocadéro, where the lighting of the Olympic torch and other protocols will take place. All of the boats will have cameras aboard so international audiences can see the athletes.

Visit Olympics.com for schedule and other info about the Opening Ceremony Parade

This historic event was put together through the concerted efforts of Paris 2024, the City of Paris, the French government, the IOC and French National and Olympic Sports Committee (CNOSF).

It could not have been pulled off, however, without the efforts and backing of Haropa Port (the ports of Le Havre, Rouen and Paris) and the Voies Navigables de France (VNF), one of the organizations that manages boating and navigation on the Seine.

Both Haropa Port and VNF see the Olympic Games as a unique opportunity to accelerate electric adoption on French waters and showcase the efforts to make river shipping in Paris completely climate-neutral by 2037. The organizations have already installed 44 charging stations along the Seine and a further 82 will be installed along the Seine and Oise river by the end of 2024.

33 million Euros ($36M) to electrify fleet

To make a big electric boat splash (pun intended) at the Olympics, they reached out to France’s Environmental and Energy Management Agency (ADEME) and the Greater Paris Regional Authority. Together they initiated the Modernisation and Innovation Aid Programme (PAMI) with grants and incentives to support private sector electrification initiatives.

Five million euros (US) were dedicated to assist in the refitting and electrification of 20 diesel-powered ships in the Paris fleet. Companies building the eleven new battery-electric ships that will be in the Opening Ceremony/Parade had access to a separate 28 million euros.

Some quick facts:

Of the ships to be refurbished, 60 per cent will be equipped with purely electric drives. The remaining 40 per cent will be equipped with hybrid drives.
For new builds:
- 63 per cent of the shipping companies are relying on battery-electric drives and
- 27 per cent on hybrid drives
- The remaining nine per cent of ships will run on hydrogen
River cruise boats account for 40% of retrofit projects (60% electric and 40% hybrid)
Sail boats carrying less than 12 passengers represent 25%
Private and working boats represents 15%.

“The Olympics are a magnificent environmental booster for the Seine Axis,” said Antoine Berbain, Deputy CEO of Haropa Port. “They allow us to speed up the greening of the river fleet. By 2037, all river cruise boats, which carried 9.5 million passengers in 2023, will be driven by electric motors!”

Torqeedo powering largest electric boat ever on the Seine

It is difficult to get information on all of the boats that will be participating in the Ceremony, but here are some highlights

The largest boat in the parade, and the longest and heaviest electric boat ever on the Seine, will be ‘Mistinguett‘, started life with a diesel engine for propulsion system and a power generator for the kitchen, lights, and air cooling.

Under the PAMI program it has been retrofitted by its owner with two Torqeedo Deep Blue 100i motors and six Deep Blue Battery 80 systems. Two additional Deep Blue battery units 80s power the hotel load.

Paris Olympics electric boats will be led by the Mistinguett — Mistinguett, newly refitted with a Torqeedo Deep Blue system

After the Olympic Parade the Mistinguett will return to her regular schedule with tour operator Joce, ferrying up to 248 passengers up and down the Seine in two tours every day, each of them lasting two and a half hours. She also is booked for corporate outings and private events like weddings and birthdays.

“As the world leader in electric mobility on the water, we have been developing customized electric propulsion solutions for over 19 years.” says Matthias Vogel, Senior Vice President of the Customized Solutions Business Unit at Torqeedo. “The conversion of the Mistinguett to an all-electric propulsion system demonstrates how traditional vessels can be equipped with state-of-the-art technology to glide quietly and emission-free across the water in the future.

Three other large river cruisers from the fleet of Vedettes de France, one of Paris’ most significant tour boat operators, will also be participating in the Parade. Vedettes de Paris has been around since 1976 and was recently awarded a Green Globe Certification for Sustainable Tourism. The tour operator has signed an agreement until 2041 with Haropa Port in which chargers are installed and Vedettes granted rights to their attractively situated Suffren Quay location if they electrify their fleet of five boats.

The refitted and electrified ‘Paris Trocadéro‘ went into service at the end of 2023 and will be joined in the Parade by two other refitted boats, the ‘Paris Iéna‘ and the ‘Paris Montparnasse‘. All of these boats will also operate as regular river cruisers. In terms of environmental impact, it is estimated that electrification of the Paris Trocadéro alone will save 460 tonnes (460,000 kilograms, 900,000 pounds) of carbon dioxide equivalent every year.

Also appearing in the Olympics Parade is the ‘Rocca II‘ from the Canuaxrama and Vedettes du Pont Neuf operators, which was the first boat electric boat on the Seine that carries more than 12 people. It takes up to 50 passengers on champagne and art cruises along the river and can also be booked for private events.

On the smaller end of things, French electric outboard manufacturer FinX was one of the grant recipients to design and create a 12 metre boat, Imagine, that will be powered by the company’s unique biomemetic motor inspired directly by dolphin swimming and the movements of their tail fins.

This is the first boat the company has built. In 2022, FinX Project Manager Jacques Budin commissioned Louis de Cuniac at Chantier Naval du Cap Ferret and Théo Moussion, founder of the architecture firm ARMEN Initiative for design and construction. The boat is made of bio-sourced composite materials and is 100% recyclable.

Meanhile Timothée Bladier of FinX began work on a new FinX electric outboard designed to achieve a thrust force equivalent to that of a 150 hp propeller engine. The Olympics Parade is the maiden voyage of Imagine, and like the other boats, it will then go into service as a rental craft.

This Opening Ceremony Parade is not only an historic moment for the Olympics, but also for electric boating. Just a few weeks ago we wrote in Plugboats that the 2024 Monaco Energy Boat Challenge was the largest on-water congregation of electric boats ever, with about 20 commercial boats participating in the event.

Paris Olympics electric boats lead the way

The 31 boats in the Parade surpasses that number, and while this assembly is somewhat different because it is largely river cruisers, together these two events show that electric propulsion is a more than viable alternative to burning fossil fuels in a wide variety of use cases.

Even more exciting for the future of electric boating is that these are not demo or prototype boats (other than one hydrogen boat in the MEBC), they are being purchased by boaters to enjoy time on the water with their families and friends and in Paris will be used by operators to carry thousands of passengers along the Seine every single day.

The massive worldwide interest in the Olympics makes this an incredible opportunity to show that the Seine traffic can be zero carbon by 2027 and that other cities with inland waters can follow their lead.

FinX Torqeedo Joce Vedettes de Paris Cauxrama Vedettes du Pont Neuf