A great combo – Flux Marine outboard and the electric Scout 215 XSF скачать в хорошем качестве

A great combo – Flux Marine outboard and the electric Scout 215 XSF

Flux Marine is a US innovator in electric propulsion that first attracted attention when they won two awards, including ‘Best Green Product’, at the 2021 Newport Yachting Festival. Listen to this article as a podcast: It is led by CEO Ben Sorkin, COO Daylin Frantin and CTO Jonathan Lord . Sorkin and Frantin have been friends since growing up boating together in upstate New York, where Sorkin would pilot remote control boats around Lake George. Sorkin met Lord at Princeton University, where he proposed a hydrogen propulsion project to a professor. The professor suggested battery electric instead, Sorkin developed the concept enough to get seed funding from the university’s Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering and Flux Marine (https://plugboats.com/tag/flux) was born after they graduated in 2018. Read: Flux Marine lands $15.5M Series A Funding (https://plugboats.com/electric-outboa...) The start-up was selected for many accelerator programs and received important grants, then raised $15.5 million in a Series A funding round. They originally had three electric outboard models but opted to focus on just one, the Flux 100 HP, which can be programmed for lower and variable power outputs. Scout one of the first to partner with Flux Scout Boats of North Carolina was one of the first companies they partnered with to offer electric boat packages and they now have the 215 Dorado and the 215 Sport XSF. Flux also partners with Highfield RIBS (rigid inflatable boats) on their Sport 660 model, and recently added a Tritoon to their model lineup. (https://plugboats.com/flux-marine-out...) I got an invitation from Ben to go out with him for a sea trial on the Scout 215 XSF during the 2025 Miami Boat Show and jumped at the opportunity. Scout launched the non-electric version of the 215 XSF in 2016 and it and has earned a reputation for being a comfortable, affordable, well made boat. The centre console layout provides a walk around deck that is quite roomy for a fairly small boat. The ‘SF’ in SFX stands for Sport Fishing, so there are plenty of built in rod holders and other features for the avid angler, but there is also lots of comfortable seating that makes this a great all around family boat. There are a couple of things about it that make it a good candidate for electric outboard propulsion and match up particularly nicely with Flux’s technology. Optimized weight and hull design Like all Scouts, the hull is built of 100% hand-laid fibreglass that provides strength using less resin-saturation and helps reduce overall weight. Weight, of course, has an effect on how much power is needed to run the boat, and comes into play with electric boats because weight reduces range. The efficiency of the hull also effects the range, and the 215 has Scout’s NuV3 proprietary stepped-hull design that uses less fuel – whether that be liquids or electrons. While the weight is optimized, this is still a 21′ 5″ (6.2 m) boat weighing in at 2,775 lb (1,260 kg). When powered by burning fossil fuel, the usual motor is a Yamaha or Mercury 150. The Flux 100 electric outboard delivers continuous power of 100 hp (75 kiloWatts) and peak power of 175 hp (130 kW) and as I found out on our sea trial, the electric Flux provides all the power you need. Yes, the 150 ICE motor does have a higher rating compared to Flux’s continuous rating, but the fact is that all of that power is rarely used, and when it is needed the peak capabilities of the Flux 100 HP easily match the speeds the gas motor provides. There is also ample range for the average boater. We used very little of that power when we first pulled out of the slip for the sea trial, as many of the waters in and around Miami are speed controlled to help protect manatees. That gave Ben some time to tell me the Flux story. He told me their vision was always to develop something from the ground up, get rid of any preconceptions coming from what already existed – in ICE outboards or electrics – and start with a totally clean slate. The two criteria that everything revolved around were: maximizing efficiency and eliminating any outboard motor pain points. They were already ahead on the efficiencies, simply by using an electric powerhead as compared to a gas motor that creates a lot of heat and noise, but only converts about 30% of the energy in fossil fuel into actual work. Flux outboard designed with a clean slate Outboards usually have other inefficiencies on top of that. Traditional setups have a complicated gear mechanism that transfers the vertical rotation of the drive shaft to the horizontal rotation of the prop shaft. Ben and his team did their analyses and found that a further 15% (of the 30% efficiency) get lost in the cogs. So the team looked at belt drives. Flux’s electric motor is over 90% efficient and synchronous belt drives are up to 98% efficient. Flux bega...