Most of the focus around electrifying transport has been on land-based vehicles. But water journeys can also benefit from more sustainable power – if you can find a way to increase efficiency. New Zealand-based Vessev reckons the combination of unique hydrofoil technology and electric motors can revolutionize small boats. I talked to CEO Eric Laakmann about the possibilities, while an on-location team took the Vessev VS-9 for a test ride at its home location of Auckland.
Vessev VS-9: Perfect Harmony Of Hydrofoil And Electrification
At first glance, the VS-9 looks like an ordinary boat, although the clean appearance has some resemblance to a modern technology device. This is no surprise when you learn that Laakmann brings to bear years of experience developing products at Apple, including later iPod generations, iPads and the original Apple Watch. After some years spent on a sailing sabbatical, he ended up in New Zealand, the home of modern hydrofoiling after the 2013 Americas Cup win empowered by the technology.
This was the original inspiration behind Vessev. “The founder of the company Max looked at that and thought it could be commercialized,” says Laakmann. When he joined the company, he brought his product management knowledge to build a strategy and define which markets to chase. “Two markets stood out to me as places to start with. One was harbor ferry operators because they have an intense usage of fuel. They turn on at 5:00 AM and off at 10:00 PM, using fuel the entire time, even idling at dock. We can cut that by up to 90%. That’s an important cost saving when each boat uses cubic meters of fuel every day. The other market was tourism operators looking for ways to make their operation more sustainable.”
The VS-9 brings together two innovations to create a compelling package – hydrofoiling and battery electrification. The former improves efficiency by lifting the boat out of the water so that it “flies” over the surface, dramatically reducing drag, and the latter (like land-based EVs) makes for much more frugal energy usage. “This combination is three to five times more efficient than what has come before and that’s a big number,” says Laakmann. “If you looked at automotive or aviation and said there’s this new technology, it’s going to make cars or planes 3 to 5 times more efficient, that would be a game changing innovation, and we have that for marine.”
In fact, the reduced drag of hydrofoiling is what makes electrification possible, because a very efficient powertrain is more sensitive to inefficiencies elsewhere. “It’s a synergy made in heaven, hydrofoiling and electrification, because anytime you electrify something, you must be responsible about how you’re using the electricity. The weight of the battery is significantly more than fossil fuels in terms of energy. The VS-9’s batteries are 98.6kWh, which is about the same as the Tesla Cybertruck or Rivian R1T.”
This battery size makes the VS-9 very practical. “It’s not any bigger than a car, so we can use Type 2 car chargers like on any vehicle without issue, which means we can charge in any marina with normal 22-kilowatt AC car chargers,” says Laakmann. The onsite reviewers in Auckland witnessed this in action, as the VS-9 was plugged into a standard Type 2 charger, having consumed roughly 18% of its battery for a 30-minute ride in the harbor. The fuel for this might have cost $83 in fossil fuel for a regular boat, but less than $5 of electricity for the VS-9. Assuming hydrofoil cruising, the VS-9 has a range of 50 miles with one passenger, dropping to 40 miles with the maximum 10 passengers. When foiling, energy consumption is around 2.5kWh per nautical mile.
Seamless Vessev VS-9 Transition To Hydrofoiling
The hydrofoiling is not complicated for the boat’s pilot, as the transition is automatic. The foils are controlled by actuators and sensors of boat height and speed rather than operating manually. “The boat takes off at 19 knots,” says Laakmann. “That’s when the foils have enough lift to get out of the water. It cruises between 20 and 25 knots. That’s the most efficient. The top speed will be around 30 knots.” This makes for a non-uniform relationship between speed and efficiency. The drag on a hydrofoiling boat goes up until they lift out of the water, then it drops for a bit and then goes up a lot. “There is a certain speed where you’ll be as efficient as a certain slow speed. We’re as efficient at 25 knots as we are at 5 knots on the VS-9.”
The test team (my intrepid relatives who live in Auckland) commented that it wasn’t obvious that the VS-9 was transitioning from normal to foils because this was a gradual process, although once the change was complete the ride was clearly smoother, and you could see a smaller wake out the back of the boat. Turns were particularly slick, rapid and impressively stable. Overall, it felt smoother and faster than a regular ferry, although not as quiet as expected. Vessev’s next design should reduce this considerably.
“The current motor is a bit loud,” says Laakmann. “We’ve got a new propulsion system that we’re putting in the water on July 1st. Our current boat uses an axial flux motor on top of the T foil that drives the struts down to a gearbox, which goes out to a prop. It is 90% efficient, but you’re losing energy. With the new system, we’re winding our own custom motors with steel magnets, copper and aluminum. This is direct drive on the hydrofoil itself with two of our own custom 40kW motors. Active cooling allows us to make the motors even smaller because the motors are in the water. That will be a big upgrade just in terms of efficiency, manufacturing, and noise. We expect greater efficiency and range.”
The VS-9 doesn’t need expensive batteries with exotic chemistry, either. In fact, the Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP) type popular in commercial electric vehicles such as buses and trucks is ideal. “There’s a lot of good reasons for that,” says Laakmann. “LFP is cheaper. It doesn’t have any nickel or manganese or cobalt. We had some considerations around how they’re mined but the real important thing to us is LFP batteries are long-lasting even at deep discharges. If you look at road vehicles and how they’re used, most of the time, you’re probably only using a couple percent of the battery, because you’re doing short runs and occasionally a long road trip.”
“For nickel manganese cobalt (NMC), every time you deeply discharge it, you’re doing a lot of degradation to the battery cycle life,” continues Laakmann. “With LFP you can deeply discharge over 80% or 4,000 cycles, which is much more aligned with what this commercial marine application scenario is. It’s a little bit heavier of course, but if you’re measuring the performance of your vehicle at Year 5 versus Year Zero, you end up with better performance with LFP batteries than NMC. We’re not trying to make an F1 car or an America’s Cup vessel. We’re trying to make an SUV, pickup truck or minivan – something that is safe and just gets the job done.
Vessev VS-9: Looking Beyond 10 Passengers
The review team said the VS-9 looked relatively normal compared to other boats in the marina, with no obvious signs of the capabilities that lie below the waterline at rest. The interior is modern but not overly ostentatious, with a tidy control area. There is room to walk around in transit, and the windows are large enough to take pictures during the journey. My onsite team were impressed with the slickness of the VS9, considering it is the first boat from Vessev.
Since its unveiling last year, the VS-9 is already finding commercial interest, and the first vessel went into service in Auckland on January 29th, 2025. “It’s been going well,” says Laakmann. “We’ve got the world’s best partnership with the largest ferry operator in New Zealand, Fullers360. They’ve got a fleet of 4,966 seats. They’ve got a zero emissions goal by 2040 and were looking at the technology that gets us there.”
Laakmann sees a bright future for Vessev and other startups that have entered the electric hydrofoil market, such as Candela. “Automotive is totally different to boat manufacturing,” he says. “You probably have 20,000 different boat manufacturers in the world whereas automotive manufacturing is a mere handful of big companies.” Boat companies also tend to produce much more customized designs. “The VS 9 platform is flat on the deck, so we can put whatever we want on top of it,” he says. “We’re doing a production run of 12 and they’re going to be different configs. Some of them will be a water taxi configuration. Others will be much more geared towards recreational. Some will be workboats.”
He also envisages larger Vessev designs in the future. “Most ferry operators are not looking for 10-passenger boats because that’s much more of a tourism experience thing,” he says. “They’re looking for something bigger, so we’re going to be scaling up to versions of these vessels that we’re calling the VS-18 because it’s nominally 18 meters long. It will be all the same tech, just bigger. The upper limit is 40 meters. The Boeing 929, which is a hydrofoil created by Boeing in 1975, is around 90 feet, or 27m. There is still a handful of those in operation in Hong Kong and Japan. These things can get quite big, but we don’t want to start there.”
Although an 18m Vessev craft would be twice as long as the VS-9, it would still only have one deck so aerodynamic drag wouldn’t increase proportionately. It would also enable the foils to be wider, which is more efficient. “On this larger vessel, it’ll have a much larger beam, a width of 10.5m, so it would be a high aspect ratio wing that should get us some significant additional efficiency gains,” says Laakmann.
Laakmann sees a very healthy potential market for Vessev. “There are just over 100 electric hydrofoiling boats in the world today, but there are 33 million boats overall,” he says. “Given that this is the most efficient way to move on the water at high speed, it’s not crazy to think that there’ll be a good number of vessels that do go this way. Even 1% would be 330,000. That’s a lot of sales potential. The base VS-9 is $620,000, with options that come on top of that, but the running cost savings are huge. Some people in island resorts are considering orders of around 40 boats.”
Who knows, we could see a Vessev VS-9 in the next season of The White Lotus. “I did watch the show recently and it did cross my mind,” concludes Laakmann.
