Let's put an electric drive maritime myth down...

More than time to face up to some problems, who says there's no voter fraud (but you might want to check out the voting while dead culprit), and George R. R. Martin makes a point...

I had a couple of readers who took exception with my pointing out the other day that electric propulsion works out at being quite a bit less expensive in a repair/replacement situation... Sadly, the maritime myth of electric propulsion being MORE expensive than ICE just won't go away.

The thing to keep in mind is that electric propulsion is a very simple system and there is very little to go wrong. You could fry the motor, destroy the controller, have a belt fail, or if really talented in the mayhem department, you could rip the throttle off and destroy it in the process.

Not a lot to go wrong but, just in case, here are some numbers for the system on "So It Goes" (an Electric Yacht drive if anyone is interested)...

The most likely repair, a stretched or broken belt, would cost you somewhere south of $25. Not a lot of money (and I really should buy an extra one for just in case).

A replacement motor would cost between $600-$800 and is small and light enough to actually consider buying one as a spare.

The brain of the system is the controller and a replacement would run around $800. Just for the record, we do have a spare controller as it is the one part we'd expect to find difficult to get repaired or replace in the boonies.

The throttle is just a potentiometer so replacement is anywhere from a couple of dollars to around $100 for something that looks like what we expect a boat throttle to look like.

Those are replacement costs and as most of these items can actually be repaired, repair costs could be quite a lot less...

So, even if we had to replace ALL of the various parts of our system that could go wrong, we'd only be out of pocket (by my calculation) somewhere around $1630 which, I think you'll all agree, is quite a bit less than replacing all the major bits on an ICE system.

I really should also point out that an engine-less cruiser does not have to worry at all about the cost of replacing systems or repairs which might be something to keep in mind.

Listening to Lee Michaels

So it goes...