It took people a few minutes to understand what they were seeing. That was the experience Ashis Bhattacharya had at February’s Miami International Boat Show, where Chris-Craft showed off the prototype for its first electric-propulsion boat, the Launch 25 GTe. Bhattacharya is senior vice president of business development, strategy and advanced technology at Winnebago Industries, which is the parent company of Chris-Craft. He was eager to talk to show-goers about the prototype, but at first, people didn’t realize the 25-foot boat had electric power at all.

“It looks exactly the same as a regular Chris-Craft,” he says. “It’s the same finishes, the same teak wood, the same instrumentation, all the same things you’ve seen from Chris-Craft.” Only after people saw the poster next to the boat, with the word “electrification” on it, did the concept click in their minds.

“A lot of customers did a double take,” Bhattacharya recalls. “They said, ‘What? This is electric? I don’t believe it. Tell me more.’”

There’s a lot to tell. The Chris-Craft Launch 25 GTe is the first electric-powered marine offering from Winnebago Industries, which has long been known for its recreational vehicles. The journey into electric propulsion started there, with the all-electric, zero-emission e-RV concept vehicle. It made its public debut at an RV show in January 2022, and it set off a raft of discussion not only about how to improve that RV concept, but also about how to apply the lessons learned to a marine offering, too.

As the e-RV concept vehicle improved to a second-generation prototype that was displayed for the public this past January, Chris-Craft’s team was working toward its first-generation prototype boat. Neither one will be ready for the production line for at least a couple more years, but Winnebago Industries plans to follow the same process for both the RV and the boat: get feedback from customers, dealers, employees and influencers; use the products in real-world conditions; make adjustments based on people’s comments and the evolving technology; and then bring the production models into the marketplace.

“Our approach is to come out with a really strong prototype, but then work with customers and dealers and users to refine the concept for the last 10 percent,” Bhattacharya says. “It’s a process that we call co-creation.”

The current Chris-Craft prototype has an electric propulsion unit that’s equivalent to about 420 horsepower with a maximum running time of about two hours and a top speed of 50-mph, according to Bhattacharya. (There are no details yet on range.) The one thing he’s sure of is that the production boat that follows in a few years will have different specs, because the technology is advancing so quickly.

“Battery technologies are evolving very, very fast,” he says. “This Chris-Craft, when you look at the power of the battery, it’s 133 kilowatt hours. That’s the battery capacity. When you look at the first prototype of the e-RV that Winnebago launched in January 2022, it was 84 kilowatt hours. This Chris-Craft has 50 percent more capacity than that first e-RV prototype.”

And, all of that evolving technology brings new engineering and design challenges that Chris-Craft’s team wants to be sure about before taking the boat into full production mode.

Ron Berman, Chris-Craft’s vice president of engineering, notes that it was just last summer that the American Boat & Yacht Council published its standards for boatbuilders to follow when designing and constructing these types of boats. And, Berman says, the National Marine Manufacturers Association won’t even start its third-party certifications on these types of boats for consumers until the 2024 model year.

“The systems for electric propulsion are more complex,” Berman says. “The batteries are more than just lithium-ion. There’s a cooling system for them. There are battery-management systems that protect the batteries and create a level of safety for the batteries and the occupants. There are big, onboard chargers. There are computers that tie all this stuff together, that make it work well and help make it safe. There’s a lot going on with electric propulsion. You still have cooling systems, the motor is simple, but the motor is kind of the easy part of electric propulsion. It’s everything it takes to make the motor safe.”

Berman says he expects to see a 20 percent improvement in battery power density in the next two to three years alone. “In our current boat, we have a 133-kWh battery,” he says. “Think of that as the fuel tank. Twenty percent more than that, call it another 18 to 20 kilowatt hours. That gives you another 20 percent range. Think of a kilowatt hour as equivalent to a gallon of fuel. A lot of boats say you have 100 gallons of fuel. Well, if they could put in 20 percent more fuel, they’d have a 120-gallon fuel tank.”

Those changes in battery power density will affect range, speed and more by the time the prototype phase ends for the Chris-Craft Launch 25 GTe. There will also need to be evolutions in things like power-charging stations and service-technician knowledge before these boats can go fully mainstream, he adds.

“If everything pans out, because you have fewer moving parts with electric, then in theory, there should be less to go wrong and less to service,” Berman says. “But we’ll find out. We’re still learning what reliability and durability mean with electric.”

The main questions people asked about the boat at the Miami show were: How far will it go? How long will it run? And, how long does it take to charge? Overall, Berman says, the interest level has been high, especially through social media and the Chris-Craft website. For instance, a Tesla user group is now following the boatbuilder online, specifically because of this project.

So from the perspective of the Chris-Craft team, they’re on the right track, and early adopters of electric-powered boats are figuring out what matters to them in terms of their own future plans.

“People buy boats today, and they spend a lot of money on docks and boat lifts,” Berman says. “The next investment might be in more power to where their boat is stored, whether it’s on a trailer or on a boat lift. Any electric propulsion system is going to take a while to charge. If someone goes to a waterfront restaurant, they’ll be able to charge, but they’re not going to be able to do it fully during lunch for an hour and a half. You need more amperage. The more amperage you push into the system, the faster you’ll charge the boat, but it takes hours, not minutes.”

Speed is high on Berman’s mind for the project in a number of ways. He saw one display at Miami with an electric boat that went to the Bahamas and back on a single charge—but at only 5 mph, which is not what fans of the Chris-Craft brand want.“The other thing that’s interesting, where I think Chris-Craft is unique, most of the electric boats that are bigger than little skiffs or johnboats, most of them have sacrificed comfort amenities and features to save weight, to get range,” Berman says.

Some boaters might be fine with that, according to Berman, but Chris-Craft believes most boaters want the comfort and the luxury that they’re used to. “They just want it to run on electricity instead of fossil fuels. So our approach was to maintain comfort and luxury and features,” he says

To achieve that goal, both men say, the company plans to take its time with prototype refinement. No hard date is set for the boat to go into production. “We respect the brand that we have,” Bhattacharya says. “And it weighs a little heavy on our shoulders. When you put a Chris-Craft badge on a boat, it means something. There is a high bar. We have to make sure we live up to that.” 

LOA: 25’8”

Beam: 8’5”

Draft: 1’2”

Displ.: 7,755 lbs.

Power: EVOA E1 Electrified Performance System

This article was originally published in the May 2023 issue.