Pure Watercraft launches electric Pure Outboard

On Wednesday, Pure Watercraft announced its flagship product Pure Outboard, which is now available for pre-order.

Andy Rebele, a boating and rowing enthusiast and an entrepreneur, founded Pure Watercraft. He and his team of engineers spent the past four years researching and developing the Pure Outboard. The engine was built from the ground up without borrowing pieces of a gas-powered outboard.

“In the beginning, if you try to start to use parts from gas outboards, you’ve really hobbled yourself. Our electric motor is intrinsically designed for more than 20,000 hours of life,” said Rebele. “We had to design every part around the fact that we have a very long life motor, so our gear set is also rated for 20,000 hours.”

Rebele said an outboard motor should function like an electric refrigerator: It should be quiet and “just work” as a customer expects.

“A lot of the detail that makes [the engine] quiet, like a really well designed gear set, is very important,” said Rebele. “We discovered … when you don’t have so much motor noise, you discover what else does make noise, and it’s mostly pumps and gears. So we put a lot of work into making pumps and gears quiet, putting them in places where you wouldn’t hear the noise and designing them in the first place so they didn’t make a lot [of noise].”

Pure Watercraft developed its own electric motor, motor controller, battery pack and charger system to ensure it achieved the level of efficiency and long life the company wanted to provide, as well as offering a zero-maintenance product.

“The vision is to make boating clean, quiet, high-performance and convenient,” said Rebele. “There are markets where we can serve much better than the gas alternative, like if somebody’s going out and they’re trolling … they normally have to take two motors. With ours, they can replace up to a 40 hp gas motor for their main motor with our motor, and that same motor can go as slowly as they like. … It serves that customer much better than what they’re using today.”

The engine is rated for 26.8 nominal hp, which is a propulsion equivalent of 40 hp, and a continuous power rating of 20 kW.

“There is not a quality electric outboard in our power range,” said Rebele, noting that most electric outboards in the market are in the 1, 2 and 4 kW range or go up to 50 kW, not serving the middle market. “The number of outboards sold between 9.9 and 50 hp is huge. It’s not like the under 5 hp market. So this has a potential to make a real impact.”

Pure Watercraft will first be addressing the rowing market, providing demos to rowing coaches and shipping directly to customers by the end of the year.

“The minute I demo Pure Outboard for people, they can’t stop smiling. It’s a delight to see their reactions to a powerful, yet quiet and peaceful experience on the water,” said Rebele. He added that more than 90 percent of rowing coaches who have already received a demo signed up for a pre-order.

The plan is to have mass-market volume available by the fourth quarter of 2017. Rebele says boat builders can partner with them to design their boat around the Pure Outboard in order to create an ideal product for their specific market. The company will likely be targeting the yacht tender and fishing boat markets.

Pure Outboard is available for purchase via a refundable pre-order deposit of $500. For more information and to pre-order the Pure Outboard, visit www.purewatercraft.com.