The 100% Solar Powered Electric Yacht That NEVER Needs Charging!

The Mediterranean is home to over 300 days of sunshine per year as well as some of the world's most sensational boats. In 2014 Silent Yachts, often thought of as the Tesla of the boating world, saw an obvious opportunity. Boat + Sun + Solar Panels = No Brainer! Andy Torbet and Imogen Pierce went to visit the team to see how practical a solar powered yacht is in practise, understand why they can't just use wind and also to enjoy a little taste of luxury ..! Let us know what you think in the comments!

01:23 See you there!
02:04 A World First!
02:55 What are Silent Yachts?
03:29 Why Not Wind?!!
04:34 How Much Power from the Sun?!
05:16 Time for a Tour!
06:00 How Much Does the Boat Use?!
07:30 Designed from the Ground Up!
09:40 What's the Range?
10:23 Expensive?!
11:44 Waterproof Batteries
12:18 A Little Caveat
12:37 Another World First!
13:20 Will Solar be the Mainstream Solution?
14:27 We're Back on Land!

#SilentYacht #Boat #ElectricBoat #SolarPowered #SolarPanels #Sustainability #Innovation #ElectricVehicle #Electric

[trixiepickle]

If I ever won the Lottery this would be the boat for me. I absolutely love it. Thanks for covering it.

[JJ-zghh]

I've been fawning after these silent yachts for about 6 months now. Thanks for doing this video. What an incredible thing! If I ever come into money...

[jannepeltonen]

I loved the James Bond style edits in this :D

I remember reading back in mid-1990s in a Finnish engineering magazine about a retired Finnish engineer who had built himself a monohull yacht completely covered in solar panels and I remember being very impressed by it, especially the fact that he could get enough energy to run an electric oven in it, in addition to running the motor. But because the industry and financiers here were what they were, our country lost that opportunity. Glad to see some Germans have seized it a couple decades later :D

[nomoreheroes]

I bet there was a fight in the Fully Charged presenter team over who got to work on this one! It'd be interesting to see this tech applied on intercity boats like those on the Thames where the air pollution has much more of a negative effect.

[petesplaneta]

What a beautifully presented and filmed video this is. Outstanding production and an awesome boat. Thoroughly enjoyed watching this whilst also learning plenty about these game changing boats. Well done FullyCharged and well done Silent Yachts!

[topcat]

Imogen, she's a treat. Great addition to the team. Can't wait to see her do more content like this.

[mngbennett]

I am watching from a much more attenable version of this boat. We are in BC's Gulf Islands on a 34" sailing catamaran. We only have about 750 watts of solar but it is enough to run the fridge, keeps things charged and do most of the cooking. We don't have electric propulsion yet but hopefully in the not too distant future.

[jaybenny]

I’ve hoped you’d cover one of the silent yachts for a few years. Deffo my dream purchase.

[AndrejGobec]

One thing we basically take for granted when going to the seaside is the noise of ICE motors on the water. Plus this noise is amplified under water so imagine the stress on marine life.

Now imagine all boats being electric, no ICE engine noise just the sound of nature and those screaming kids next door .... ahhhh .... bliss

[bozstitch]

What an excellent programme. I think this is your best produced piece yet! I love the 2 presenter format. A definite winner. I didn't think this was going to be a particularly interesting VT but was very pleasantly surprised. Well done Fully Charged team!

[carsonc]

Awesome and thanks for the stats! It's very difficult to quantify the stats because of how much solar varies. Also the fact that the boat needs to burn fuel in order to travel long distances complicates things as well. Michael said they crossed the Atlantic all on solar but the consumption was actually 370 gallons. He wasn't being misleading on purpose, and 370 gallons is practically nothing but my point is that the boat does absolutely require fuel under way.

Because the solar is intermittent, and varies then I feel like a very useful stat would be how much fuel the boat would burn on a long trip with the solar panels completely disconnected. Silent Yachts doesn't provide this number and nobody ever asks for it. It would be really cool to know what the worst case scenario is for fuel burn. Then you can pair that with a best case very sunny day scenario and know that no matter what you're going to land somewhere in-between those two numbers.

I say all of this as a huge Silent Yachts fan but I would very much like them to be better at telling us the statistics about the boat.

[mullergyula]

I guess an e-bike makes most sense for me when we speak of going electric. This is more of a sci-fi movie. These cost upwards of 2.5-3M EUR. Let's say you rent it out for 20 years and there is no maintenance, infinite battery life, no repairs. It would still cost approx 3000 Eur per week. After adding real costs and profit we are talking about 5-6000 Eur per week. If you have 6 person on board that is 1000 EUR per person, probably a reasonable price for this luxury.

[Osa_Kozak]

Nice job, 60 kWh of photovoltaic production per day and 2 engines of 250 kW each :D This means that the maximum power of 7 minutes can work (not counting the refrigerator, air conditioning, etc.) Either way, I like it very much :D

[carbon-structure]

Came across the silent yachts about a year ago and I'm sold on it, will be ordering one very soon! This vid just reinforces the great decision, thanks for covering this wonderful, innovative company

[rushja]

Wow, we really appreciate the work you put into these difficult assignments. It's a tough job etc

[elhoward]

These will be great... once they get the price down on them. (A 2016 Silent 64 on Yachtworld is $2 million.)

The filmography on this video is awesome! Good job!

[Musketeer]

Thanks for a very interesting review of these solar powered boats.

[Vangelis.]

my favorite part of any electric engine is how silent they are!

[davidmorley]

Absolutely loved this. Way out of my league, but seeing the application of green tech bodes well, and of course these super rich toys funds more practical solutions that may one day work for me. Such levels of solar presumably also create additional opportunities to go (and stay) in places where there is no diesel. Definitely left wanting to see more.

[KrzysztofC-]

"150 liters per minute" equals to 2.5L per second - I highly doubt it. Likely it's per hour, which is fine.