Alameda electric boat manufacturer Navier is preparing to launch a trial run of its water taxi service in the San Francisco Bay in the coming month, CEO Sampriti Bhattacharyya says.
Navier produces all-electric hydrofoil boats that glide atop the water, similar to the hydrofoil boards popularized by Mark Zuckerberg. The company is beginning production on its Navier 30 model for direct consumer sales at $375,000 a pop, while planning on launching the taxi service pilot to lay the bedrock for commercial fleet sales.
Bhattacharyya says Navier is launching the service in the next few months and will offer rides to and from popular Bay Area destinations like San Francisco, Alameda and the Peninsula. She says the boat can travel between San Francisco and Richmond in 15 minutes and will be able to seat up to six people.
She declined to discuss specific times, pickup or dropoff locations, potential partners for the service or the status of permits.
Video reviewed by the Business Times showed that the boat's ride was smooth enough that a glass of wine could be set on the dashboard without spilling.
"We don't have a lot of boats currently this year, but with our two boats that we have, we will be doing a few test pilots to understand the routes and to figure out how we will roll out the service in the next few cities," Bhattacharyya said.
Bhattacharyya is a former aerospace engineer at NASA who founded the company in 2020 to with lofty goals of revolutionizing maritime travel. She has a grand vision to saturate the Bay Area's water ways with fleets of Navier boats that would drastically cut down on travel times across the Bay compared to cars and charge cheaper fares than a taxi.
"If you could move things on the water at the cost, speed and convenience as a land born option, then waterways are no more an obstacle than another highway," she said. "So you can roll out a whole new mode of scalable transportation network."
The company is also working on automation software to eventually make its fleet of boats autonomous.
It landed on its hydrofoil design as a way to overcome the main obstacle of electrifying boats: drag. Batteries on boats drained quickly in water bound vessels because they have to push against the water, but with the hydrofoil the boat glides on top of the water with very little drag thus making the battery more efficient, Bhattacharyya says.
The company has so far raised $13.7 million and is backed by Global Founders Capital and Treble.
