Engine conversion to all electric? (‘09 210 repower to “Tesla”)

[Dfred]

I have long wondered … and have been wildly encouraged by my eco-sensitive & sensory-sensitive teenage nerd progeny, can we “easily” repower the Yamaha direct-jet-drive platform from gas marine engines to a Tesla (or Yamaha, or other brand from a junk yard) engine? Remove fuel tank and system, and drop in the EV battery bank?

I have no specs or pricing on this project pontification - however, I would love any ideas and contributions from the excellent community of experts on here.

I have 400ish hours on our 2009 AR210 - feel blessed to own it and park it on our home’s boat pad (hence it could charge easily off our utilities). As much as I wish a new terrific boat was in the financial cards - I’m content and love so much about this gen 2-era Yamaha. If it were electric would it be better …. Quieter, faster, fun-er? Is it even feasible?

I was a bit shocked that Yamaha has not yet released even a concept of this before other manufacturers have put out electric powered production sport boats….. showing off some wild testing by my fav Shaun Murray wakeboarding from an EB Nautique 4 years ago. Yamaha has electric OB motors… but no full electric jetboat yet?

 

[CarolinaJet]

Not to rain on your parade because I also want an electric boat. But personally repowering it is not remotely “easy”. Here are some of the problems you would have to solve, assuming you’d use Yesla:

1) how to fit the battery and safely mount it, it will weigh 1000-1700lbs. The procedure in the Tesla service manual involves setting the battery on a special cart and lifting the car off of it after you unbolt it. They also specify putting on high voltage thick rubber gloves and additional insulating gloves while doing the most exciting parts. So you’ll need a method to move it safely, custom mounting brackets, and to cut your boat wide open to get it in there. Then custom work to put it back together.

2) battery thermal management. Given hot days in the sun and high battery demands of pushing through water, you can’t skip cooling. It’s computer controlled liquid cooling in the car with lots of sensors. So you need the computer and to adapt the sensors, probably reprogram it for the different environment. Also you will have to mount all the cooling infrastructure. Yyou can’t just water cool it because you need it to be able to cool itself out of the water when charging.

3) you also need the computer to manage charging. This might be more straightforward than cooling, but temperature is an input to charge rate. Perhaps all of this is onboard the battery itself and you’ll just have to sort out how to give it inputs for charge limit, etc.

4) you’ll need to build some custom throttle integration and some way to power the whole thing on and off.

5) accessory systems - just run some LV batteries and charge them separately? Or leverage the Tesla components to charge the LV using the HV?

6) motor cooling. Also liquid cooled. These you might be able to use water-based cooling

Now that said, using something more primitive for the powetrain like my 2013 leaf - much smaller battery, simpler cooling might be somewhat more feasible. Maybe 2 leaf battery/motor combos, completely independent systems?

 

[Dfred]

Not to rain on your parade because I also want an electric boat. But personally repowering it is not remotely “easy”. Here are some of the problems you would have to solve, assuming you’d use Yesla:

1) how to fit the battery and safely mount it, it will weigh 1000-1700lbs. The procedure in the Tesla service manual involves setting the battery on a special cart and lifting the car off of it after you unbolt it. They also specify putting on high voltage thick rubber gloves and additional insulating gloves while doing the most exciting parts. So you’ll need a method to move it safely, custom mounting brackets, and to cut your boat wide open to get it in there. Then custom work to put it back together.

2) battery thermal management. Given hot days in the sun and high battery demands of pushing through water, you can’t skip cooling. It’s computer controlled liquid cooling in the car with lots of sensors. So you need the computer and to adapt the sensors, probably reprogram it for the different environment. Also you will have to mount all the cooling infrastructure. Yyou can’t just water cool it because you need it to be able to cool itself out of the water when charging.

3) you also need the computer to manage charging. This might be more straightforward than cooling, but temperature is an input to charge rate. Perhaps all of this is onboard the battery itself and you’ll just have to sort out how to give it inputs for charge limit, etc.

4) you’ll need to build some custom throttle integration and some way to power the whole thing on and off.

5) accessory systems - just run some LV batteries and charge them separately? Or leverage the Tesla components to charge the LV using the HV?

6) motor cooling. Also liquid cooled. These you might be able to use water-based cooling

Now that said, using something more primitive for the powetrain like my 2013 leaf - much smaller battery, simpler cooling might be somewhat more feasible. Maybe 2 leaf battery/motor combos, completely independent systems?

Huge THANKS! I really appreciate the thoughtful inputs …. Especially to the battery part - complex size, cooling, management issues, and HVE applications. Etc.

Very interesting…. Awesome pointer -> The Leaf appears to be an excellent donor. I’ll have to do more research on this and examine potential power and range ability of that system for this application. Those motors are <$1k used, but battery prices are hella expensive.

Many of the “marine” e-motor conversion kits (Elco) appear to be targeted for slow cruising speed. The e-Jetski by Tiaga (?? Where are you Yamaha Waverunner?) is a solid ground-up platform…. A fascinating closed-loop battery cooling system is all in-house designed and builtin. The fun looks spot on, but the range is - meh - for the $$.

Everything I find points to “not worth it” and “impractical”. Bummer - was hoping we were there yet with this tech. The tell has also always been shown that hydrogen is really the next real power plant - Toyota has shown that, and now Yamaha is probably about the be all-in (and skip the dead-battery electric fad)