Waterloo-based ENVGO tests prototype electric hydrofoil boat on Burlington shores

A Waterloo-based company is making waves with its latest invention: an all-electric hydrofoil boat.

The team from ENVGO brought the prototype to Burlington Thursday, to demonstrate what the future of boating might look like.

“It feels like flying a plane, rather than crashing through waves,” said Mike Peasgood, the CEO of ENVGO.

It’s sleek, silent, and made in Canada, and it could change the way we think about life on the water.

“We’re talking about 100 kilometres of range, cruising for about two and half hours, at a speed of about 40 kilometres an hour,” said Peasgood.

It’s called the ENGVO NV1 and it’s a fully electric hydrofoil.

“Which is a wing —  it sits underneath the water and it lifts the whole hull out of the water,” said Peasgood. “The reason why this is so special is it gets incredible efficiency — about three to four times as efficient as a regular boat. One of the challenges with most electric boats, is they go really slow, or they can go really fast, but not for very long.”

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One of the most interesting things about the boat is not only how quiet it is, but the fact that the wake — the trail of waves left behind as it moves through the water — disappears once we go onto the hydrofoils.

“You can go longer, go much faster, and on top of that we brought in a whole suite of AI features for auto-docking, safety solutions, collision detection; to make boating simpler, safer, and faster,” said Paul Masojc, the COO of ENVGO.

Experts say it’s only a matter of time until electric boats are the norm, but for now they’re missing just one thing.

“Lack of widespread charging infrastructure,” said Satyam Panchal, an Assistant Professor in the University of Waterloo’s Engineering Department. “For electric boats, we have like, limited or almost zero charging infrastructure right now. So these are the problems with electric boats.”

The current model costs around $400,000, but developers say that price tag isn’t representative of what it’ll cost once it goes to market.

For now it’s a pricey prototype, but similarly to the Tesla Roadster, the NV1 might mark the moment that boating changed its course.

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