Jaguar’s battery-powered V20E boat just broke a maritime speed record.
Peter Dredge, the co-founder of Jaguar Vector, piloted the boat at speeds of 88.62 miles per hour across eight miles of the Coniston Water lake in Cumbria, England. His speeds broke the previous record of 76.8 mph set ten years ago.
The small and speedy boat was developed with racing experts over at Vector, as well as Williams Advanced Engineering, from which it borrowed the electric drivetrain’s components. The specifics of the battery, motor, and controller are unclear, but the team used similar hardware and technology that Jaguar uses in Formula E, the all-electric street racing series.
This might be Jaguar’s most exciting news about their speedboat game.
This might be Jaguar’s most exciting news about their speedboat game, but it’s hardly their first foray into electric transportation. The company’s been slowly distancing themselves from traditional combustion engines, even announcing that they’ll fully stop producing combustion engine-based cars by 2020.
The company is in the midst of launching its first all-electric car, the Jaguar I-Pace. And this fall, a full field of I-Paces will compete against each other in a racing series that will take place before Formula E events. Maybe an electric boat racing series is in Jaguar’s future, too.
