Elco is located here on the east coast, NY I think, and is one of the oldest companies dedicated to electric boating. However, they have gone through many ownership changes and challenges with one very recently. I tried contacting them this past year for my project and after several phone calls and the total lack of information, I gave up. I do hope they have figured it out and got beyond their troubles.
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--- In electricboats@..., David Goldsmith <suntreader@...> wrote:
I don't have any more info than is available from Hunter or from a brief
article in Sail:
I know I gave that last boat a hard time, so let me make it up by saying
this is a pretty sweet little set up. Elco is a very good name in electric
boats, I'd love to have their systems and expertise designing my set up. The
batteries are six 210amp/hr AGMs (4d?), which is a good compromise on cost
and easy of maintenance. This is just the right sized boat to have a system
like this, small enough that the motor and battery requirements are
reasonable, but big enough it can handle the weight and room. Their claimed
20 miles at 6 knots sounds reasonable and not like an 'ideal conditions at 2
knots' type of situation.
I'll note that the motor looks to be a very good system, completely
enclosed, and possibly direct drive, its not clear if there is any gear
reduction done in the case. Anyone familiar with Elco systems? The only
concern I'd have is that it runs on 72V which is beyond the nominal 48V at
which more safety concerns have to be addressed. I'm more comfortable with
48V but a professionally designed and installed system should be fine since
they know what they're doing and I'm just tinkering.
I didn't see any estimate on cost, I would assume it costs more than the
standard diesel, but it really shouldn't be that much more.
Sometimes Hunter is given a hard time for being one of the big-three of
sailboats and producing a sort of mainstream product where price and quality
have an inverse relationship. I owned a 1977 Hunter 27, the really tubby one
designed by John Cherubini, and it was really a pretty good boat for what it
was, built like a tank too. They've changed a lot since then of course. I
took a tour of the factory a few years ago and was pretty impressed. They
weren't quite the modern marvel the new Beneteau factories are but it was
clean and well organized and there was still a lot of hand work going into
assembling the interior components and installing the systems.
This is the type of electric propulsion I think will be first to go
mainstream, in boats that are really a little on the small side for a diesel
and a little on the big size for an outboard, where low maintenance is more
important than range under power. I really hope the other builders follow
suit. As for the hobbyist, this is exactly the type of system that many of
us are trying to build for our own boats of about this size and the more
Hunter, Catalina, and Beneteau start offering these as options the better
available and easier they will be for us to implement too.
Very cool, thumbs up!
David
On Tue, Nov 23, 2010 at 3:11 PM, Todd <toddbates99@...> wrote:
I just saw that the Hunter 27 has an electric drive option from a company
named Elco. Anyone have more info on this?
