FOND DU LAC, Wis. — For more than two years Andrew Przybyl and his team figured out exactly what Mercury Marine’s first electric outboard motor would look like. They essentially started from scratch.
“When we first started this there was a lot of excitement. A ton of questions and a lot of things to be answered. Even the shape and the architecture of the outboard,” he said. “We spent months and months going through tons of concepts and tons of things to figure out from a usability — from a consumer standpoint — what is the best option. What features do we include? What features do we not include?”
What emerged was the Avator 7.5e outboard motor.
Przybyl, who has been with the company for two decades, said the experience of using the electric outboard is much different than the internal combustion engines he worked on during the majority of career.
“It doesn’t really come to light until you’re on the water and you start moving the boat and all you hear is the water. The thing is so quiet,” he said. “With the electrification product there’s no engine, there’s no starting, there’s no idling. It’s just so quiet and you really get to enjoy nature. You get to enjoy the water in a whole different world.”
Mercury Marine said the motor produces a similar speed and acceleration of as its 3.5 horsepower four stroke outboard. Battery runtime at rated power is about an hour. It’s longer at slower speeds.
The batteries are designed to safely work even if submerged in water for a short time.
Perissa Bailey joined Mercury Marine last year following a career in the automotive industry where electric vehicles were right in her wheelhouse.
She’s now heading up electrification efforts at the company’s headquarters in Fond du Lac.
“This is really the beginning of a long journey that Mercury is on in terms of embracing sustainability and developing an electrified portfolio of products,” Bailey said.
The Avator has generated interest from the boating public and others at trade shows — like the Consumer Electronics Show.
“CES Is one of the worlds largest consumer electronics show and it’s an opportunity for to demonstrate our innovation and product capability to a really broad breadth of consumers and a really broad audience,” Bailey said.
It’s also taken home innovation awards and accolades at boat shows.
Przybyl said more electric products are in development and will compliment the lines of internal combustion engines built by the company.
“This was designed to push small little dinghies up to 14- and 16-foot fishing boats. Granted not very fast, but it gets the job done,” he said. “This opens up a whole new idea of, ‘Hey I’m not very tech savvy, I don’t want another engine to take care of.’ This is just like a cordless tool. You plug it in, you charge it, you go boating. It really brings a lot