The sheer versatility of the modern electric motor has been harnessed to offer a bewildering choice of drives, but they essentially fall into three main categories: outboard, inboard and pod (or thruster). There’s a bit of crossover between concepts – saildrives, jet drives and hybrids, for example – but for any conversion project the propeller will be spun by one of the three.
Before you start, there’s a key question to ask yourself. Why go electric? The engine hours of a modern leisure boat are usually low. The average season for a UK-based motorboat is only 50 engine hours and a sailing yacht is even less. So, your electric conversion won’t be to save fuel. For the cost of an installation
