Evinrude News

[jimh]

The website JOURNALTIMES.COM, published by the Racine Journal Times newspaper in Wisconsin, reported on October 27, 2020 that Bombardier Recreational Products (BRP) is planning to re-tool their manufacturing plant known as the Sturtevant Marine Propulsion Systems facility to accommodate new product lines and will be expanding their local workforce.

BRP senior media relations advisor Elaine Arsenault is quoted:

As announced last May [2020] with the discontinuation of the production of Evinrude E-TEC and E-TEC G2 outboard engines, our Sturtevant facility will be repurposed for new and existing projects such as the next generation of our engine technology, publicly known as Project Ghost and Project M

The article goes on to quote excerpts from a Power Point presentation made to investors and analysts describing the previously announced Project Ghost and Project M future products. I believe the presentation being referenced is this one, made at an Analysts and Investor Meeting in October 2019, before BRP announced it would be ending production of outboard engines:

http://ir.brp.com/static-files/4158acfd-80cd-482d-a657-29bd8420c6d8

In the presentation, Tracy Crocker, President of BRP Marine Group, describes the "Marine Vision" for BRP in the future, and also introduces Project Ghost and Project M.

[Mambo Minnow]

Whatever the new technology, we know it won’t be applicable to Boston Whaler boats - old or new.

[jimh]

You never know what BRP might invent. They threw in the towel on making conventional outboard engines, but exactly what sort of "next generation of [their] engine technology" they are going to begin to produce remains to be seen.

An Evinrude dealer who was in attendance at an Evinrude presentation that introduced the Project Ghost has commented that the new product was intended to be used in re-powering boats. Whether that will be true can only be known when Project Ghost comes to market.

[Xray51]

The problem that they will have is two-fold.

1. That they abandoned both their customers and their dealers by stopping production of the E-Tec line.

2. Whatever the new technology/design is, who wants to buy a new product with no reliability history? I for one do not want to be a beta tester, especially with a single engine setup that goes out in the blue water.

It also happened just as the boating industry is benefitting from significantly higher sales as a safer form of family activity due to Covid crisis.

Its almost like a "what were they thinking?" moment.

I wouldn't be surprised if at least one of [these projects] turns out to be electric, like a waterborne Tesla, so to speak. That seems to be the trend in transportation. AIRBUS is working on electric airplanes. Some light airplanes have already been approved in Europe. Electric boats are not new. Disney has used them for years. However, re-powering a boat to electric from gasoline would seem to be a more difficult proposition than re-powering with a traditional gasoline outboard.

Whatever it is, Evinrude seems confident enough to be betting the farm on it. We will have to see.

[jimh]

I have doubts about Evinrude being able to develop an electric propulsion engine for boats that were previously powered by gasoline outboard engines. First, BRP does not have any expertise in electric motor design or manufacturing. None of their other power-sports vehicles have electric propulsion motors. Second, BRP does not have any experience in storage battery production. Electrical propulsion would be heavy, expensive, have short endurance, and would require access to recharging facilities to be maintained.

If BRP were going to develop an electric motor for boat propulsion, they would probably have to use some other manufacturer's batteries as a source of power and perhaps some other manufacturer's electric motor. They would become more of a system integrator than a manufacturer.

All-electric cars are just being developed, but they still lack a really useful range for any sort of long-distance driving. And recharging a car is much simpler than recharging a boat. You can drive the car home and plug the car into your home power. I guess you can drive a boat home, too, if it is a trailered boat.

A boat kept on a lift would need to be plugged in for charging. A boat left on a mooring would not have access to charging.

With gasoline engines you can re-fuel at a fuel dock in maybe ten minutes. An all-electric boat motor probably would need several hours of charging at a high rate of charge to restore full charge to its boat battery bank.

Airplanes are usually kept at an airport when not in use, and an airport might have facilities for charging plane batteries.

Not too many outboard boats are kept in marina slips. And I suspect that the marina might want to charge for use of their electricity to recharge big propulsion battery banks.

Also, at this moment, gasoline fuel prices are very low in the USA. You'd have to think that BRP is looking at the USA as their primary market. Right now you can find gasoline fuel at below $2-per-gallon. At that price, gasoline is practically free in terms of the overall cost of owning and operating a boat for the typical boater who only operates the engine about 50-hours per season. My boat averages about 4-GPH fuel consumption, and for 50-hours that is only 200-gallons. I don't think I consumed even half that amount this year. My fuel costs were probably about $200. There is no way I would invest perhaps $20,000 to get an electric outboard and another $10,000 in a battery bank, and then another $500 to install a 240-VAC charging outlet at my house, just to save maybe $200 every hear. And that comparison ignores what the electricity costs would be to recharge the battery bank.

I think BRP forced Evinrude to shut down production of outboard engines because Evinrude was not showing any gains in market share, their sales volume was not growing much, if at all, and the competition was fierce. I think Evinrude was in fifth place in terms of market share, well behind market leaders Mercury and Yamaha, and presumably also behind Suzuki. I would guess Honda was probably in fourth place.

I think the Ghost Project is going to try to move into a new market, and allow BRP to stop competing head-to-head in the traditional outboard market. If you look at BRP's other power-sport products, they are all market share leaders or if not leaders then very close to the top of the market. Their corporate self-image probably was not compatible with being a fifth-place finisher in the outboard engine market.

[Don SSDD]

Good analysis Jim.

I guess they could go after the big boat market, those boats that run 3 or more 300+ horsepower outboards. Do a hybrid- use a gasoline powered motor to run electric motors running outboards. Electric has plenty of torque to run props, the gas engine produces electricity to run the electric motors and one gas engine could be used to efficiently run the motors. No need for batteries other than to start the gas engine.

This setup is used to run large diesel hybrid tugs, hybrid deep sea drill rigs, large off road Caterpillar rock trucks, lots of things.

Where you are replacing 3 or 4 large outboards, you have a lot of weight to displace so designing a hybrid of some sort could be an option.

Just throwing some pie in the sky thoughts out there.

[jimh]

I think BRP has a plan to go the other direction--not toward bigger boats but toward smaller, less expensive, introductory boats. Their Project M concept boat looked like a very small pontoon boat, maybe 20-feet long.