X Shore new members of SEC

Kelin Jia, electric drive expert, X Shore. Photo: X Shore

X Shore is a start-up company within the recreational boats industry. In 2022 they became partners of SEC to learn and get inspiration from scientists and the industrial network.

X Shore make fully electric high-end recreational boats. The Swedish company launched the first prototype in 2018 with an office in Stockholm and a factory in Linköping with around 100 employees in total. 

“Our factory has the capacity of manufacturing about 400 boats per year mainly to support the sales in Europe, USA and the Middle East. Our ambition is to make electric boats affordable also to more average consumers. Recreational boating accounts for 1/3 of total CO2 emission from domestic flights in Sweden today, so electrification of boats can really make a difference”, says Kelin Jia, Electric drive train expert at X Shore.

The company has two boat models at the moment. One 8 meters long and one 6,5 meters.

The electric boat also makes less impact on the local environment since leakages are rare compared to fossil-fuel engines.

A main challenge for the boat manufacturer is the drive train. A regular car motor wouldn’t work. When car motors don’t demand so much power after reaching wanted speed, a boat needs to keep the power high all the time to keep up the speed.

“We are pioneers in the electric boat industry. Many EV components are not suitable for us. What we need is more similar to truck engines, but those engines are much too big for having on a recreational boat, so this is really a challenge”, says Kelin Jia.

X Shore joined SEC in the spring of 2022 to follow the development. The company is still too small to really get engaged in centre-projects, but are open for collaborations.

“SEC has a lot of organised activities supporting PhDs and Senior researchers. We want to get inspired and get new ideas from them. We can also contribute with unique data from our extreme conditions, such as salty and hot environments. We are happy to collaborate on these issues”, says Kelin Jia.