Octillion and Vision Marine Partner for Speed
Seeking Their Second Electric Powerboat World Record for Speed
RICHMOND, CA—In the world of speed, there’s three venues where humankind has historically pushed the bleeding limits of what is possible in motion.
This has been done on the technical side with maximum ingenuity, creativity, design and engineering, space-age material use, and of course taking the human body, as a driver or pilot, to its own limits.
Names like Ken Warby, Major WIliam “Pete” Knight, Andy Green, also come to mind when talking about speed records in water, air, and land.
Popular testing grounds like the Bonneville Salt Flats, Blowering Reservoir, or the skies over New Mexico first come to mind when thinking about the venues where the limits of speed have been established.
With the relatively recent emergence of next-generation electric powered vehicles—of all class types—an exciting new era of racing has been born, and one which the potential for gains in acceleration, speed, safety, and of course, a guidepost for what technological innovation can mean for the decarbonization of vehicles towards a mass transition to cleaner and better modes of transportation.
On the road, Formula E is booming in popularity. And on water the electric powerboat E1 Series, has attracted big-name team owners, such as Tom Brady, Rafael Nadal, Will Smith, Didier Drogba, Checo Perez—to name a few.
And in the world of electric-powered marine speed, there’s a dedicated group of people out there every day trying to reinvent what it means to fly on water.
"The marine category is one where Octillion has vast, successful experience," commented Paul Beach, Global Co-President of Octillion. "Our expertise in building purpose-built packs that excel in the unique and demanding conditions of marine environments, have allowed us redefine the limits of what was previously thought possible in areas like battery system performance, durability, and safety in oceans and waterways around the world."
Since Octillion's founding in 2009, we have been obsessed with driving innovation forward in every possible aspect of battery innovation in e-mobility. This determination has resulted in over 1,000+ active and considered patents, a staggering total for a battery system company.
We really mean it when we say that we are 'The Leaders in Battery Technology'.
Whether it’s safety, durability, range, harsh operating conditions, or flat out speed, with over 300+ modular pack designs, our engineering team is constantly reinventing what is possible in battery system technology and performance.
It’s often assumed that Octillion focuses only on the battery electric vehicle space, or BEV, especially with our 5% market share of EVs in China, and our leading market share of the bus market in India. But, that's far from accurate, as we have a deep strategic commitment to both emerging and underserved end markets that present major opportunities and that are in-line with our purpose-built expertise—industries like marine and off-highway, as notable examples.
In January 2021, we announced that we partnered with Vision Marine Technologies of Quebec to develop batteries for the next-generation propulsion systems. Besides working closely with their mainstay technology, we also delved into our skunkworks racing division, Octillion Racing, to go fast.
And go-fast we did. With Vision Marine’s E-Motion 180 electric outboards in their S2 Powerboat, we helped set the water speed record in 2021 with Octillion battery packs on board—reaching a water shattering 116 mph in the Lake of the Ozarks Shootout.
It was quite the feat.
And for 2024, we are at it again with Vision Marine. We’ve worked at our Richmond, California R&D facility to provide the Vision Marine team with a more powerful battery—two packs that can collectively deliver over 1000HP of power to the Vision Marine drive system to attempt the new mark.
With a new boat design and three-time Formula One world champion Shaun Torrente back at the help, we’re proud to be a part of history—and potentially re-writing it, again.
Stay tuned for more updates on this World Record attempt for the water speed in an electric boat set for early fall 2024.
