The Hinckley Dasher: the "Tesla of the seas"

published 16 March 2018

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New-England-based Hinckley has been making boats since 1928, originally building and maintaining the lobster vessels of local fisherman in downeast Maine, says Ariana Rockefeller on Forbes.com. Lately it has been making fashionable runabouts and picnic boats. Now it has unveiled the Dasher the world's first fully electric luxury motor yacht. It has remained loyal to its classic designs, but is a bang-up-to-date craft with 3D-printed titanium hardware and "artisanal teak", which is actually an epoxy composite hand-painted to look like the real thing, but which keeps the boat's weight down.

Indeed, the Dasher is the lightest boat the company has ever produced, says Matthew Kronsberg on Bloomberg. The craft is driven by twin 80hp electric engines powered by lithium-ion batteries made by BMW. Together, they propel the boat to a top speed of around 27mph, with a range of 40 miles (if pootling along at the yacht's 10mph cruising speed). Range anxiety shouldn't be a problem, however. The touchscreen console boasts a GPS display with the boat's location and "a circle that grows or shrinks in size, indicating your remaining range at any given time, depending on how fast you're going and how far you've gone".

Like the Tesla Roadster, the Dasher is "a market-ready vision of what post-petrol transportation could look like". One advantage an electric boat has over an electric car, however, is ease of charging marinas "already provide a well-established charging infrastructure thanks to ubiquitous dockside power sources". Recharging takes four hours "about the time it takes for a leisurely lunch at the marina and a swim at the beach".

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Ben studied modern languages at London University's Queen Mary College. After dabbling unhappily in local government finance for a while, he went to work for The Scotsman newspaper in Edinburgh. The launch of the paper's website, scotsman.com, in the early years of the dotcom craze, saw Ben move online to manage the Business and Motors channels before becoming deputy editor with responsibility for all aspects of online production for The Scotsman, Scotland on Sunday and the Edinburgh Evening News websites, along with the papers' Edinburgh Festivals website.

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