It’s all aboard and – quietly – full speed ahead for the founders of Australia’s first electric boat startup Genevo Marine as they begin to make waves on their mission to design and manufacture Australia’s first electric speed boat.
The co-founders of Genevo Marine, director Damon Rahmate and CTO Andrew Davey, came up with the concept three years ago and employed their more than 30 years of combined expertise in boat building, electrical engineering and renewable energy to bring their vision to life.
“We’ve always had a passion for boats and had a dream of building our own electric boat,” Rahmate told SmartCompany.
“Over the last few years, we could see that the same transition that’s happened within the on-road transport sector is inevitably going to happen within the marine sector.
“We could also see that working with the technology every day, knowing the energy density of battery packs and having all the context, we could see that the technology’s there now to be able to do it and offer meaningful enough range for boats and the performance that performance boat owners want.
“That’s how and why we started the journey and we started the development of the boat about three years ago.”
Designed by Australian superyacht designer Misha Merzliakov, the Genevo E8 is a 8.2-metre pure electric boat, with a 400kW motor, 132kWH lithium-ion battery, proprietary recycled carbon fibre composite hull, high-quality prosperity electric drivetrain and battery system.
The E8 will be built by boat builder and founder of Gold Coast-based Mahi Boats Dan Williams, with Genevo Marine aiming to begin production on its electric boat in mid-2024 and first unit inspections and sea trials to be completed by the end of the year.
The New South Wales-based startup also engaged Deakin University early on to do some materials testing on recycled carbon fibre, which Genevo Marine hopes will set them apart from anyone else.
“Because as far as we can say, there’s no one else in the world using carbon fibre” Rahmate says.
The Boating Industry Association’s most recent State of the Industry report, which was released in August last year, found that Australia’s marine industry had seen a turnover of $9.64 billion for the 2022-2023 period.
Former Boating Industry Association (BIA) president Andrew Fielding said at the time “our industry has seen significant growth over the last six years, with turnover up by 16% over that time”.
According to the 2023 Boating Data Report Card, 1 in 10 Australians have a boat licence and more than 25,000 were directly employed in the boating industry, with over 7,000 contractors also engaged within the sector.
In Australia’s recreational, superyacht and commercial marine sectors there were more than 2000 businesses operating in 2022-2023, with close to 75% of companies in the boating industry being small, family businesses typically employing less than six people.
There are close to one million registered vessels in Australia, with more than 2.5 million Australians carrying a licence to drive a powerboat.
Rahmate told SmartCompany that Genevo Marine would initially be targeting the Australian market.
“We’ve already had some interest from some government departments here in Australia for our vessel, or utilisation of our drivetrain which will be proprietary,” he says.
“I think that’ll be a key factor for our growth, having developed our own drivetrain that can be utilised in other vessels and scaled up or scaled down.
“That was a key criteria at the start that we developed our own drivetrain. It just gives us a lot more flexibility.
“The initial first few years will be very much focusing on the Australian market. But we’re very focused also on the medium term, looking at the broader US and European markets. Asia is also a potentially huge market. There’s a big market in China for overseas luxury brands, which I think we’ll fall into.
“The electric boat market is very much a nascent burgeoning market.”
