Time to Upgrade to an Electric Outboard? Benjamin Sorkin of Flux Marine.

Our guest today is Benjamin Sorkin, Founder of Flux Marine, a Rhode Island-based company innovating electric outboard motors.

I was invited to visit Ben’s shop back in January following a conference organized by the Blue Venture Forum. I was impressed by what I saw. 

Ben and his team have taken electric propulsion technology a long way from when I first looked for an electric outboard for my oyster farm back in 2010. Needless to say at that point, I didn’t find a solution that fit my needs. 

Judging from the clients' boats I saw they have outfitted, Flux Marine seems to be - and pardon the pun - hydroplaning towards the future. 

Benjamin Sorkin
Flux Marine

Transcript

Abigail 

Welcome to the podcast today where we celebrate Innovation for a Happy Planet. I am your host Abigail Carroll. Our guest today is Benjamin Sorkin, Founder of Flux Marine, a Rhode Island-based company innovating electric outboard motors! I was invited to visit Ben’s shop back in January following a conference organized by the Blue Venture Forum. I was impressed by what I saw. Ben and his team have taken electric propulsion technology a long way from when I first looked for an electric outboard for my oyster farm back in 2010. Needless to say at that point, I didn’t find a solution that fit my needs. Judging from the clients boats’ I saw they have outfitted, Flux Marine seems to be - and pardon the pun - hydroplaning towards the future. Let’s hear it from Ben. 

Welcome to the podcast, Ben.

Ben 

Thank you so much for having me this morning, Abigail.

Abigail 

Well, it is a huge pleasure. It is springtime in New England, and this is a time when we're all thinking about getting our boats back in the water. So tell me what you guys do at Flux Marine.

Ben 

We're advancing propulsion technology to deliver the world's best boating experiences, and we're all about electrification and sustainability.

Abigail 

There have been some actors in the electric outboard market, but you seem to be taking this to a whole new level. Tell me more about, you know, what you're making there.

Ben 

A big focus at Flux Marine is how do we design something that's truly compelling for mass market adoption? And in order to do so, we needed to start with a clean slate. We didn't want to start with a legacy [inaudible] engine and electrify it. We think about how electrons move. Electrons, you know, from the battery to the outboard motor, from the inverter to the electric motor, you know, that gets converted into the shafts, down to the propeller. How do we do that as efficiently as possible? And how do we reduce as many pain points as possible? As you may have heard in you know, your life of boating, people often joke that boat stands for bust out another thousand and <laugh>.

Abigail 

Yep. Been there.

Ben 

We've all been there. And so anything that we can do to reduce some of those pain points, things like maintenance and winterization, we have technology to do that. So we design our own lowered units, our own midsections, our own power trains, and the end result is something that's generally half the weight of a competitor's electric outboard and requires extremely low maintenance, if any maintenance at all, and no winterization. So things like changing impellers or ingesting seawater are going to be things of the past.

Abigail 

Interesting. Tell me more specifically what you're actually making. We'll just start there so people really understand.

Ben 

So we build mainly electric outboard motors and battery packs for boats. In the marine industry, it's different than automotive where, you know, if you buy a Subaru, you're not really questioning who makes the engine under the hood. If you look at a boat, you know, very clearly who makes the outboard motor and over 95% of new boats are sold with outboard motors. And the outboard motor carries as much brand as the boat itself does.

Abigail 

For sure. And there's a lot of brand loyalty in that. So you're dealing with that.

Ben 

Absolutely. And we want to build a big exciting brand. And there are also thousands of companies that build boats and only a handful that build propulsion systems. [Yeah.] And so by being a propulsion system technology company that allows us not to necessarily compete with the thousands of companies that exist, but allows us to partner with those thousands of companies and help them offer options to their customers for electrification.

Abigail 

So you think you might go to Honda or Suzuki or one of these outboard brands and help them get to this electric outcome?

Ben 

Mainly thinking in terms of the boat builders themselves. And we're going to all these different boat builders and hull manufacturers [Yeah.] And helping them go electric. You know, we're always open to collaboration within the space. So as the larger players do look at electrification, you know, our door is always open for conversations.

Abigail 

Actually, I just bought a 1969 Boston Whaler <laugh>, and it came with a, I shouldn't admit that I actually bought it, um, but I, I got it almost as a gift. And, with a 1985 Johnson 90 horse, it's gonna need to be replaced in short order, I'm quite sure. So if I wanted to take this electric, um, first of all, why would I wanna do that? And second, what would be the offering and how would I go about it?

Ben 

There are a couple different reasons that you'd want to go electric on that. I think one interesting reason is the pollution aspect of it. So an engine like that, and pretty much all in outward engines, not only do they pollute CO2 emissions, but they don't have catalytic converters. So for every gallon of gasoline burned, compared to a road vehicle per se, you are releasing about 150 times as much particulate matter, thinking PM2.5, NOx, SOx, the really, really bad things you're releasing 150 times as much per gallon burned as a car. So that's one reason to think about it. Reason two is, at the end of every year, you are going to need to winterize that engine. You're gonna have to take it to somebody and you're gonna have to winterize it properly. With our electric outboards, there is no winterization. Reason number three is, I'm guessing you don't have a fuel dock at your house.

Abigail 

No.

Ben 

And so fueling up on the water is a pain point. So you're going to need to find time to, when are you gonna fuel up? How often do you need to fuel up? How far do you need to go to fuel up? Are you gonna be the only one at the fuel pump? Or you're gonna have to wait for the fuel pump? And so being able to just keep a boat plugged in locally is much simpler than having to go to a fuel dock. And lastly, the performance, it's exhilarating. It'll get the boat up on plane much more quickly, it'll sound a lot better and you're not gonna be smelling fumes out there. 

Abigail 

So, you've got a whole suite of different HPs. Do we talk about electric motors with the same vocabulary? Or is there a new vocabulary that we're gonna embrace to talk about sort of how fast, and how quickly it ramps up to those speeds. 

Ben 

My opinion on this is fundamentally we should be able to use pretty much the same vocabulary, but be able to add a little bit more context and a little bit more information beyond what is typically used. So you might often hear things about like horsepower equivalent or it's electric so it's more efficient. So it's more powerful from a horsepower perspective. The way that regulating bodies and large OEMs rate outboard engines right now is horsepower at the propeller shaft. So we believe we should do it the same way. So when we talk about our hundred horsepower outboard, that's a hundred horsepower at the shaft. Now in a gas outboard, it's very straightforward what a hundred horsepower means. It means you can create a hundred horsepower, of course with the right propeller combination, but you can do that nonstop until you run out of gas.

When you look at electric motors, there's what's called the continuous regime and the peak operating regime. And if you look at how electric motors are viewed in vehicles, road vehicles, the peak power is really the only most important thing. So a Rivian electric SUV or truck, for example, has around 835 horsepower. That's the amount of horsepower it has for when you really hammer down on the pedal and you accelerate.

That's the only time you can use 835 horsepower. When that vehicle is on the highway, you're using, you know, 20, 30, 40 horsepower. [Yeah.] So that electric drive train is not designed to produce 835 horsepower for extended periods of time. [Yeah.] Now, if you put that in a boat, a boat operates differently than a vehicle. It's like driving a car straight up a hill, you're trying to overcome water resistance, and water is a thousand times denser than air. And so in a boat, we need that continuous power the entire time. So circling all the way back, if we put a Rivian drive system in a, in a boat and we wanted to put a horsepower rating, we could not say 835 horsepower because it cannot do that continuously in a boat. [Yeah.] And so when we rate an outboard, we're rating a hundred horsepower continuously. And then the big modifier there is it has additional power for acceleration. So we like to say our a hundred horsepower upward can tap into up to 150 horsepower for acceleration. That way, when you're trying to compare it to something that, you know, as a boater, you know it's gonna have the same top speed as a hundred horsepower gas engine, but it will have the acceleration of 150 horsepower gas engine.

Abigail 

Amazing. And it's quiet, I'm assuming.

Ben 

Yes, it's definitely quiet. I wouldn't say it's silent and I think there's a little bit of a misnomer. Very rarely is electric, completely silent. But it's certainly much, much quieter than any gas engine out there.

Abigail 

And that's actually really important for marine life. We don't talk enough about the noise pollution that we're putting into the water. 

Ben 

Absolutely. The benefits to the planet truly go on and on between not having CO2 emissions, not having particular matter, not leaking fuel into the water, being much quieter, and not creating the smell. It makes for a happy planet.

Abigail 

Thanks for the shout out! <laugh>. So okay, we talk about like Teslas versus cars. There's like 90 parts in a Tesla compared to like 9 million in a proper car. Is that something that holds true for you guys? Are there just many fewer parts to deal with?

Ben 

Absolutely far fewer parts. A lot of that fundamentally comes down to how a combustion engine works. Versus the electric motor. And so we're eliminating hundreds of parts through that. And the inherent maintenance required of, you know, an electric rotating machine is orders of magnitude less than a combustion engine. Beyond that you have a couple shafts and a propeller and some bearings, all of which are rated for thousands of hours. And so in terms of regular scheduled maintenance or buying a new outboard and having to go back after 20 hours of use for your first maintenance tune up. [Yeah.] That should not be a part of boating in my opinion. And so we make a big effort for everything we design. We ask ourselves how does this help with efficiency? How does this reduce maintenance? And how is this gonna create a better boating experience?

Abigail 

Is that part of your value proposition in the end? You know, having been an oyster farmer, we abused our engines for sure. But you know, that was a huge part of the budget annually cuz we had a few engines and we worked them to death and, you know, they were constantly in need of servicing and we didn't always have the people on staff to do that for us. So I could see how that kind of efficiency or or savings would play into your value proposition.

Ben 

It really does add up. And it also really depends on the end user. So for someone who's using your boat, like a working boat, Aquaculture, oyster farm rental fleet, university coaching fleet, especially the folks that have a P&L, they can really look at that maintenance savings and it can make a lot of sense. If you look at an individual user, an individual user doesn't necessarily always keep track of every expense on their boat. An individual user does remember are the days and weekends where something went wrong and they're not able to go out with their family.

Abigail 

So what does a Flux Marine motor set you back?

Ben 

It really depends on the application and what boat you're going on. The horsepower you need, the battery size you need, whether you're buying it for a retrofit or whether you're buying a complete boat package from us. So in order to reach most of the market right now, we sell outboards and batteries for retrofit boats. So for example, something like your Boston Weller You could come to us and say, Hey, I wanna go electric and we can spec out a system for that. Or someone can come to us and say, 'Hey, I just want an electric boat. What do you offer?' And then we have a network of hull partners that's ever growing where we can provide an entire electric boat package. So typically if you're just buying an outboard motor and battery pack, it's going to be more expensive than a gas system. In a sense, you're basically paying for lifetime fuel and lifetime maintenance upfront. And if you're buying a complete boat package, it's usually maybe 10 to 20% more expensive than the competing gas boat package. 

Abigail 

Who's buying these right now? Because I've been to your shop and you're down in Rhode Island, um, and you had some pretty outrageous looking boats in there. Really cool. You had some working boats too, but I was impressed by what I saw.

Ben 

I appreciate that. We get to work with a lot of cool, exciting and passionate people and the beauty of outboards is they can go on so many different types of boats. So as far as our customers go, we have everything from rental fleet owners to people in Maine on the working waterfront To individuals who just want a boat for their family that have a dock slip. People who live on lakes is another great one. Sailing teams the electric solution is fantastic for sailing coaching. And then of course hull manufacturers are probably our biggest customer where they come in and they want a lot of electric motors for their boats to then be able to offer electric to their customers. So it's an extremely eclectic customer base. And each customer wants it for almost a different reason and it fills a lot of different niches. But the marine industry is truly segmented. And so we want to be able to offer a solution that creates the best experience in each of those segments.

Abigail 

Very interesting. 

In just a moment we’ll continue the conversation to talk about charging, competing clean energy models, and the future of Flux Marine. 

BREAK

Abigail 

We’re back with Happy Planet. 

I wanna talk about the electric stations right now. How do I charge this? Because I can see if I have a mooring, right? Maine is composed of lots of little yacht clubs and you know, if you're lucky enough and you've been here long enough, you got off that list, the dreaded list, the Harbormaster list, and you actually have a mooring that's the sweet spot. The inclination is not to pull your boat every day. What is the situation now for charging boats? And I understand there's some new players coming in to the space that are envisioning electric charging stations all over the ecosystem.

Ben 

It's a great question. It definitely varies from place to place and there are general cases and then of course there are corner cases and you know, electric isn't the perfect solution for everybody right now. But what we find is, thinking about a lakeside homeowner, a lot of folks there that have docks, they don't have big charging stations, but especially at night, you have lights on your dock most of the time to get home thinking about something like upstate New York Lake George. And so you can plug your boat right into your dock, even if it's one ten. 

You just keep it topped off and you have more than enough range for a full day of boating. You come back, you plug the cord in, it's quicker than tying a post or tying a cleat. And so that's a pretty large use case. Then you start to think about marinas, and so many marinas have power pedestals, and these power pedestals or larger boats use them all the time. I'm thinking about like a 30 foot cabin cruiser, that boat probably has a refrigerator, air conditioning. And when that boat is sitting there, it's not running its generator, it's plugged into shore power which could be 20 amp, 30 amp, 50 amp, a hundred amp. And so that infrastructure is actually built out really, really well. Even with customers we have up in Maine, um, in South Portland, we were up there doing some tests on a boat and there were power pedestal right there.

Ben 

And so when I started driving an electric car and really using the electric boats more often, as soon as you start looking around, you start to find more and more outlets, you're surprised at how many outlets exist. And the use case of a boat is different than a vehicle in that you don't necessarily need to have access to superchargers constantly. Boating is really a planned activity. You generally know where you're going to go. [Yeah.] You're not going on big road trips and small boats or long lake trips in small boats. And so you don't necessarily need that big supercharger. I think there's a time and a place where supercharging is extremely helpful, for things like rental fleets and larger boats. But for the preponderance of use cases, the infrastructure almost already exists, which is really exciting. Once again, there are corner cases. So you think about something like a boat on a mooring, well how do you do that? And there are some things that we're working on that we'll be able to help with charging on a mooring. But if you were to buy an electric boat right now and put it on a mooring, there aren't a ton of great solutions out there for keeping it charged.

Abigail 

But there are plenty of people with personal docks or mooring slips to fill your, sales runway right now.

Ben 

Yes. <laugh> without a doubt. We sometimes I feel like we can't move fast enough. Um, The demand is extremely high and as far as the electric space itself, it's still at 0% real estate

Abigail 

So I understand that you're working with a boatyard in my backyard.

Ben 

We sure are

Abigail 

A boatyard that my uncle owned many years ago. So tell me about this. Is this part of your model? Are you looking to create relationships with boatyards?

Ben 

It's a small world. I think it's important to understand the landscape of the marine industry. And I come from an entire lifetime of boating, growing up on the water, restoring engines since I was a little kid. And so I truly believe it's important to work with dealers, to work with boatyards and you know, the way in which we work with them doesn't necessarily have to be truly conventional. And I think there are areas for innovation in that sense, but it is definitely important to us to involve existing boatyards and dealers in the overall process of marine electrification. So for example, you know, the boatyard that's near and dear to your heart, they, they are very forward thinking in terms of electrification and they don't just want to be buying and selling electric boats. They want to help people understand electrification. They care a lot about the education of it. And for us, that commitment to the education is what excites us. And so we'll be doing events with them. They have one of our boats coming, at least one of the boats coming, this summer. .

Abigail 

Oh I can't wait to see it.

Ben 

And it's been a very exciting relationship.

Abigail 

Oh, that's, that's awesome. I wanna dig in a tiny bit more on the battery. Cuz batteries are heavy and you know, I've had the opportunity through this podcast interview people in the green hydrogen space and green hydrogen is a contender in the transportation industry for fueling things like boats and and trucks and things like that. So I'm wondering, why battery versus other alternatives as we're looking to replace combustion engines. 

Ben 

For us, once again, it's about building the best boating experience. And so we're not necessarily, you know, tied to one specific technology, but right now we do believe battery electrification is the most promising route. And, you know, the other option that people talk about is probably hydrogen. And there are a lot of similarities with the hydrogen system. So even if we were to shift to a complete hydrogen system, the outward would almost be the same. [Interesting.] We'd still need an electric motor, an inverter, you'd want some sort of DC power bank, But the hydrogen's a little bit more complicated. And when we really start talking about infrastructure, you don't have hydrogen at your dock.

[Yeah.] And if everyone needed to install a hydrogen station at their dock, that becomes a large investment and then you're converting energy more and more. So, you know, in hydrogen, you're converting that to electricity. [Yeah]. Where with a battery bank, you're just starting with electricity. Granted, hydrogen can be much more energy dense than a battery. For sure. And I think there, there's a use case for hydrogen without a doubt as you think about larger vessels. [Yeah.] Where batteries only scale so well in so many applications.

Because if you think about a shipping container It often goes for days at a time. And so that's where I think the alternative fuels and electrification technologies will come together. But looking at our target market, you know, the under 30 foot boat space, I think battery electric is extremely promising.

Abigail 

So you have an incredibly impressive outfit down there, and I understand that you guys are doing very well. You were very young, you graduated from Princeton in 2017. What is it like to be, you know, so young and at the forefront of something so big? 

Ben 

I’d say it's invigorating for sure. I think as the company grows, seeing the impact that we have on people, both employees, partners, customers, is something that gets me up in the morning. I grew up boating my entire life. I grew up, you know, trying to understand electrification and so Flux Marine is the culmination. We come to work and it's not, it's not really work. We were out fairly late last night with a handful of the employees testing boats.

Abigail 

Nice.

Ben 

It's so much fun. 

Abigail 

So you were the director of the Electric Marine Propulsion Lab at Princeton. So you've been doing this for a long time. So tell me a little bit about that work in, in college. How did that influence what's going on now?

Ben 

<laugh>? Yeah, so a lot of the original basis of for technology started when, when I was at school at Princeton, I was definitely not the best student. I missed a lot of class, so I could do things like build electric race cars, build electric power trains, and build electric boats. And so very early on at Princeton, I started experimenting with electrification technologies testing hydrogen fuel cells, testing batteries, testing motors, testing different aspects of electrification. And I had other students working with me. We were getting grants from the university grants from local pitch competitions. And I think we built the fastest electric boat ever to run on Lake Carnegie in Princeton. We did about 50 miles an hour. [Wow.] I'm actually excited to say that record was broken, a week, a week and a half ago. There's now an electric boat racing team at Princeton that Flux Marine sponsors and mentors, and they just hit 90 miles an hour.

Abigail 

Wow. Now are we talking about proper size boats or a little like toy boats?

Ben 

We're talking about a boat that a person goes inside <laugh>.

Abigail 

Okay. Okay. Just making sure. Just making sure.

Ben 

Yeah. Yeah. It's a, it's a race boat for sure. But so yeah, a lot of this research started back when I was at Princeton and it wasn't, you know, initially set out like, we need a product and a company. It was the fundamental need of, Hey, I grew up on the water There's not yet a compelling mass market electrification solution. I wonder if I could help come up with something. And it was years and years of research and testing different things.

Abigail 

So you did a little stint I saw at Tesla. [Yes.] Tell me about that and, you know, is Tesla interested in this space? I mean, how do you protect yourself against, um, Elon Musk with his ever growing empire <laugh>?

Ben 

The stint at Tesla was fantastic. I met a lot of really great people, colleagues, learned a ton, contributed a ton, mainly focused on high voltage batteries while I was there. I keep in touch with a lot of the folks there, in terms of protecting against someone like Tesla. We definitely welcome competition in general. It's with companies like Tesla and the automotive companies, it's still a different technology stack where they're investing hundreds of millions into designing the best powertrains for their application, which is that high peak power and low continuous power. So there would need to be a really large lift on that front. At at the same time, I think there are other priorities. So I haven't gotten my cyber truck yet, <laugh> and the, realistically the automotive market is larger than the marine market. And so companies like Tesla are really focused on getting out as many electric vehicle products on the road. And I think we've got sufficient head room to move far enough along where we can really carve out our space.

Abigail 

So what is your vision for the company for the future? Where do you guys wanna be in five years?

Ben 

What I like to say is I really want to be down by the water, having lunch somewhere, look out and see boats out there that are powered by flux outboards that I don't know. I want to see a complete stranger with Flux Marine outboards. I want see that here in Bristol, Rhode Island. I'd love to see that up in Lake George. I'd love to take a trip to Maine, look out and see these outwards. But in the next five years, we definitely hope to be a dominant player in industry with thousands of outboards delivered, hundreds of employees, and really well known and trusted brand for our technical expertise, our reliability, and our safety.

Abigail 

You are a growing company today, and usually that means you need cash. Are you guys fundraising? 

Ben 

I'd say we've been very fortunate to have brought on a lot of fantastic investors who truly believe in what we're doing, truly believe in the team and believe in the technology. And so we did our series A fund raise last year, led by, by Ocean Zero. They've been a fantastic investor and we had a lot of other investors come on board. Everything from local venture firms, to venture firms from Silicon Valley, angel investors who were pioneers in, in the boating industry, each of which acts as an ambassador of the brand for sure. So we've done very well there we're, we're in very good shape. That being said, you know, as a founder, I'm always fundraising <laugh>.

Abigail 

Right, right.

Ben 

It's capital intensive for sure. We're building a hardware product. And so everyone's looking for capital introductions for sure. But we're definitely in a very comfortable position and we're in great shape to keep moving forward and getting motors to customers.

Abigail 

I just, I was very impressed by what I saw this spring and um, and I wish you all the best of luck.

Ben 

Thank you, Abigail. I really appreciate you taking time to talk today.

Abigail 

Flux Marine is changing the game in electric outboards, amping up the available Horsepower and range. The solution may not be right for everyone just yet but for lake or near-shore recreational boaters, or potentially even ocean farmers, electric motors may be a more viable option than you think.

Thank you for listening. Please follow Happy Planet wherever you listen and leave us a rating and review - it really helps new listeners discover the show. Happy Planet was reported and hosted by me. I am also the Executive Producer. The talented Dylan Heuer is our producer and editor. Composer Georg Brandl Egoff created our theme music. Learn more about my work and get in touch by visiting happyplanetpodcast.com.