Polestar and Candela team up on electric boat tech

Under the new agreement, Polestar will supply the battery and charging systems for Candela’s hydrofoiling speedboats. Candela said the deal allows the company to tap into advanced automotive battery technology and scale up production.

“To make electric boats mainstream, we need to build thousands of boats every year,” said Gustav Hasselskog, Candela CEO and founder. “Working together with Polestar, we’re able to bring the scale of production and world class engineering from the automotive industry to the marine sector.”

The deal is an attempt to overcome two major hurdles for electrifying boating. The first hurdle is the massive energy consumption of conventional powerboat hulls, which so far has resulted in poor performance of electric boats.

Secondly, the cost of marine batteries for electric boats have been ‘prohibitively high’, Candela said. Electric boatbuilders have typically relied on smaller, boutique vendors of marine battery packs. Scarcity and high unit costs of these packs are two factors that have prevented electric boats from achieving parity with ICE vessels.