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Marcelino Alvarez loves motorboats. He grew up fishing and scuba diving in South Florida, and boats have been part of his life since childhood.
But Alvarez, 43, doesn’t love the emissions from outboard motors, so he started a company to electrify them called Photon Marine. In a warehouse on Swan Island, he and his team are ripping the guts out of Mercury outboards and replacing them with electric motors. They test their prototypes on the Willamette River, using a nearby launch.
Alvarez, a serial entrepreneur, says there is no better place to build electric things than Portland because the town has so many engineers that specialize in electric vehicles.
“There is a subculture of EV knowledge here that no one knows about,” Alvarez says. “We reduce our risk 10 times by learning from other people’s mistakes.”
A company called Cascadia Motion is making high-powered electric motors. EVDrive makes high-powered motors. Daimler Truck North America is making electric trucks.
Alvarez’s plan is to start by making boats for commercial use. He wants to put his electric motors on small boats that ferry people from cruise ships to shore and back. The short, predictable round trip means guaranteed charging at the mothership.
Eventually, Alvarez wants to build engines for pleasure craft, but battery technology isn’t advanced enough to quell the “range anxiety” of getting too far out to sea with an inadequate charge. “That’s a fool’s errand,” Alvarez says.
For now, maybe. But Portland’s hive of EV expertise might have us waterskiing behind quiet, clean, fast vessels someday soon.