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You can forget about buying a solar-powered car, but you can get your hands on a solar boat.

The Loon, built near Orillia, Ont., on the shore of Lake Simcoe, makes emissions-free electric boating a viable option.

Solar boating is a little like sailing, since the wind that powers sailboats is also a result of the sun. But solar-assisted electric boats offer the advantages of being able to travel in zero wind, and can go directly into the wind without tacking.

The Loon pontoon boat is "solar-assisted" because it has a built-in battery charger that allows users to augment the solar energy input with electricity from the utility grid, usually from shore power available at marinas or dockside. Electric boats, unlike gas-powered boats, eliminate the discharge of hydrocarbons into waterways. Such pollution is dangerous to most things on which fish feed.

Monte Gisborne, the Loon's inventor, put aside a high-paying job and risked lots of money to commercialize his dream of zero-emission boating.

He studied at Toronto's Ryerson Polytechnic University, and comes from a long line of engineers. Gisborne built a solar-powered garden tractor that he uses to mow his lawn and to clear the snow in the winter.

In 2005 he started up his company, Tamarack Lake Electric Boat Co. — www.tamarackelectricboats.com — specifically to build and sell electric boats only. It's the first of its kind in Canada.

Vaughan: Building solar cars has proven to be fun for engineering students, but it has never resulted in a practical vehicle for consumers.

Why do you think a solar boat is a better idea?

Gisborne: People expect their car to be able to take them to Montreal on a moment's notice in the middle of January.

That's different than the situation with a fair-weather recreational pontoon boat. Normal trips are much fewer kilometres in distance, and the boats are used exclusively in warmer weather, when battery performance is optimal.

And unlike cars, boats do not go uphill, ever. The simple act of travelling up a hill robs the car of a tremendous amount of energy, prematurely depleting the battery. Water current and wind currents are much less a problem than hills.

Cars travel at much higher average speeds than do boats. Speed also robs the batteries of energy proportional to the cube of the speed travelled.

Furthermore, the environment that cars travel in require the vehicle to start, stop, slow down, speed up, etc., which is far less efficient than travelling at a constant speed for the duration of a trip, as boats usually do.

Because of all this, the solar-assisted boat can be built using cheaper components — i.e., lead-acid batteries rather than expensive exotics such as lithium-polymer.

Tried-and-proven components such as the Briggs and Stratton electric outboard in the Loon are already in the marketplace and available.

Vaughan: What's in it? It sounds slow and heavy. How far, how fast?

Gisborne: In a boating sense, the Loon isn't slow, especially when compared with its relative, the sailboat. Cruising speeds of five knots make for an enjoyable time on the water.

The six-metre, eight-passenger Loon weighs in at 1,000 kilograms, only slightly heavier than a comparable gas-powered version, which adds to the boat's stability on the water.

Most trips in a pontoon boat are two to three hours at most — perhaps a cruise, or to see friends at a nearby cottage — and are normally less than 20 kilometres.

On a sunny day, my boat can travel about 50 km or more, but that sort of trip would take about seven hours. Since there is a large battery on board, even at night or in cloudy conditions, a Loon can travel at least 30 km, a fair distance on the water.

Vaughan: With all that battery charging, aren't you just transferring the load off petroleum and on to the electricity grid?

Gisborne: That's a frustrating and common misperception.

The primary consideration here is that internal combustion automobiles and boats, even in this advanced age of computers and emission controls, are horrendously inefficient. We just cannot seem to turn the energy available in a litre of gasoline as efficiently into mechanical energy as we can into heat.

Negating the obvious benefit of solar, and assuming that my boats will get 100 per cent of their energy from the grid, my system efficiency is at least eight times more efficient than the equivalent gas-powered boat, meaning that I can travel at least eight times as far on a unit of energy than the most efficient gas-powered boat.

The actual truth is that a 1969 Chris Craft boat with twin 454-cubic-inch engines (not uncommon on the waterways) is so horrendously inefficient that my boat costs only 1/150 of the fuel costs to run per km.

Generally, the solar panels provide you with about 16 km of free travel on a sunny day. For most customers, 16 km is ample and, even if you travelled 32 km one day, as long as you don't use it the next day, you're fine and the batteries will catch up.

Generally, these are weekend toys that soak up the sun all week long, gathering a charge for the weekend.

Vaughan: Give me your cost-benefit analysis.

Gisborne: The initial cash outlay for my boat is about double that of a comparable gas-powered model — $35,000 versus $17,500.

Given that there are four months of potential usage of such a boat, equalling about 16 weekends, average costs for fuel for the gas-powered boat are about $50 a weekend, or about $800 for fuel a year. This means that the break-even point, based strictly on fuel savings, is about 20 years, given that the cost to recharge is almost negligible.

However, one should also factor in the much-lower maintenance costs of electric since there aren't any oil changes, tune-ups, belts or hoses to replace. So the true break-even point is likely somewhere between 10 and 15 years.

Vaughan: Is there anything proprietary about the technology in the Loon or is it just off-the-shelf components you've assembled?

Gisborne: My proprietary aspects lie mainly in the boat design and functionality.

I have opted to use CSA-approved, tested-in-the-field, marine-rated equipment for my production boats, which actually decreases my overall costs.

I am at present conducting research and development (sponsored by the National Research Council) to continuously improve the product, which will likely lead to proprietary technology to be employed in future versions.

Vaughan: I can see a role for it in eco-tourism. Is that the market for these boats?

Gisborne: Absolutely. I have sold boats to Belize in Central America, where they really understand the needs of eco-tourism.

I am getting lots of local inquiries lately from individuals who own cottages on a pristine lake and wish to keep it that way.

Electric boating is an excellent method of travelling on the waterways, and over time it will become better understood and more broadly employed in the boating market.

Given the choice between polluting or not, people will choose the latter, but they need exposure to options such as this.

Vaughan: I love the name, but I wonder if the Loon refers more to the inventor than to the boat?

Gisborne: Tell this to my father; he thought I was pretty loonie choosing such a name.

However, the loon is a great Canadian icon, and represents what I believe is the primary reason for what I am doing.

Loons will only nest on a healthy lake. That's what this whole thing is about — an opportunity to interact with nature in a way that leaves the aquaculture the way we found it — and to enjoy conscience-free time on the water.

Michael Vaughan is co-host with Jeremy Cato of Car/Business, which appears Fridays at 8:30 p.m. on Report on Business Television and Saturdays at 2 p.m. on CTV.